Santa?! Are you really on Twitter?!

It seems nowadays everyone who is anyone has a Twitter account. In the spirit of Christmas, I decided to look up Santa Claus just for fun and see what's out there. After all, Santa Claus must be on Twitter since it's what all the important people in the world are doing these days.

Santa Claus does indeed show up when you search for him on Twitter. There are at least 20 Santas on Twitter. They range from being innocent, cheesy to just plain absurd. Perhaps one of them is the real one! Here's a few Santas on Twitter along with their Twitter pic.

1) @SantaClaus - If Santa really existed and had a Twitter account, it would probably look like this one. He tweets very authentic Santa-like comments: "Sure enjoying all the houses getting lit up for the holidays. Makes it fun flying around to see who is naughty and who is being nice."

@SantaClaus even has a very real looking url - http://www.santacentral.com/. But when you click on it, the site is nothing more than a classifieds site selling everything from townhomes to airline tickets. Then again, the economy's in rough shape -perhaps even Santa has to diversify his income source.

2) @Santa_Claus - Perhaps the real Santa was too late to join twitter and had to settle for the @Santa_Claus handle. Again, this Santa is very active on Twitter and gives what looks like legit Kris Kringle updates: "On this 44th night it is still snowing very hard and the wind is howling, I wonder how much longer this bad weather will last"

But @Santa_Claus dissapoints. Click on his website, http://www.laplandletterbox.com/, and you'll discover it's all a guise for a company that sells fake personalized Santa letters. Who knew such a service existed?

3) @Miss_SantaClaus - I'll be honest, this is just a reason for me to put up a picture of a hot woman in a sexy Santa costume.

If you're wondering, @Miss_SantaClaus is selling...you guessed it...personalized Santa letters! Why a company would think a sexy Miss Santa would appeal to parents is beyond me.

4) @LoadedSanta - Loaded Santa is just plain absurd and crude. His Twitter bio simply states: " I deliver 2 billion presents in one night to a bunch of shithead kids. I'm having a beer."

This account is an example of someone who clearly has a crass sense of humour and way too much free time. How else do you explain a person who tweets things like this on a daily basis: "In the North Pole, the Polar Express is a porno about a guy with a premature ejaculation problem."

There you have it, a sample of the many Santas roaming in the Twitterverse. Are many of these accounts a waste of time? Probably. Did I waste an afternoon sifting through these Santa accounts? You betcha!

Ah...but did I find the real Santa Claus on Twitter? Of course not kids, Santa doesn't exist! Merry Christmas!

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Can't get an interview with Kanye West? Don't worry - that's what Twitter is for!

I remember watching the film 'Almost Famous' and thinking to myself, "wouldn't it be cool to be a music journalist?" Who wouldn't want to get exclusive interviews with music's demigods, and maybe even follow them on the road to see what rock stars are like in private?

The exclusivity of that kind of access to rock stars is the reason I think music journalism has been traditionally glamorized by the public. But I think this kind of journalism is at risk of being cheapened by the advent of social media.

The reality is that social media allows entertainers, athletes and even politicians to bypass reporters and talk directly to the public. I hate to say this because it could diminish the middle man role traditional media plays.

If you just want information without insight or depth, then who needs a reporter when a celebrity such as Kanye West can speak directly to his fans through his Twitter account? And speaking of Kanye, I want to show why I think he's a good case study of how social media, Twitter in particular, has changed the way the media covers celebrities.

Kanye is a guy who has been much maligned in the media for being an egomaniac and overall asshole - especially after he interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Why wouldn't he feel the need to bypass the horde of reporters to get to his fan base? Guess what, after Kanye's self imposed exile, he made a comeback of sorts by suddenly appearing on Twitter.

And what did the media do? In our celebrity obsessed culture, the media covered his foray into Twitter like real news. This past July, a google search for Kanye West would have turned up headlines like this one from Rolling Stone Magazine, "Kanye West Joins Twitter, Debuts New Song".

Even as I write this, there's a story about Kanye West that's based entirely on what he wrote on Twitter. He's currently pissed off because one of his new songs was leaked on the internet. Did he issue a press statement saying this? Nope...he just tweeted and reached his 1-million plus followers instantly. Those tweets were then re-purposed by traditional media into a news story.

Journalists pride themselves on their sources and the answers they can get from them. I feel that kind of gets cheapened with celebrity Twitter accounts. How enterprising is a piece of work if it's quoting bite sized 140-character tweets that more than a million people have seen already? I want a reporter to get me what I can't get myself. I don't really need a reporter who's only going to quote a celebrity's tweets - I can do that myself by signing up for a Twitter account.

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