The internet is not particularly kind to the rich and famous.
In the real world, Earth's elite humans are showered with luxuries like Vogue covers for their babies and champagne bubble baths (or at least that's what I'm assuming). But on the democratic flat line of the social web, the rich, poor, and in-between are all afforded the same opportunities and platforms, and the less-than-uberprivileged masses often enjoy the sport of taking real-world luminaries down a peg online.
So, if you're a celebrity being forced to rub digital shoulders with the common folk: Ick!
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
But fret not, famous person, for your velvet rope is on its way. Facebook is reportedly testing a new app that caters exclusively to its rich and famous users. It's being touted as a discerning social networking tool for the 1 percent.
The VIP app, as Mike Isaac at All Things D reports, is being tested by a small group of famous people, and "essentially lets celebs (or their handlers) easily monitor Facebook fan chatter about themselves from a mobile device. From there, stars can quickly respond to fans on the fly, and can become a part of the conversation."
Essentially, Facebook wants to encourage its celebrity users to interact with their fans on the go without having to set foot in the digital trenches with something like a normal profile. In theory, this will allow PR teams to parse out all the shiny, fawning stuff being said about their clients so that they can reciprocate accordingly — or perhaps have a meltdown when someone says something mean.
As Isaac suggests, by catering to the social network's bourgeois, Facebook is trying to demonstrate that it has the same reach capabilities that Twitter ordinarily gets lauded for. Tweeting, it should be noted, has been the public forum du jour for Hollywood's elite for a few years now, which explains how folks like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga amassed their respective online armies.
