Gone are the days of exclusive deals with magazines where celebrities are exclusively sharing bits of their personal lives with their fans. We live in the era of mobile technology where no middle man is needed, allowing the two sides [celebrities and fans] to connect directly.
That said, we’ve spotted a new service called “Text A Star,” which works via premium SMS costing fans $2 per message. For that money you get “a unique insight into the life of your favorite player… without any media filter.” I said player cause it works with sports stars and one of the first celebs to use Text A Star is Australian tennis player Lleyton Hewitt who agreed to share the name of his daughter exclusively via the service. Magazines will have to settle with publishing that information afterwards.
In addition to Hewitt, some other sports stars are also using Text A Star — including AFL players Gary Ablett, Adam Goodes and Buddy Franklin — who send two messages a week to update subscribers about training and life in general…
Paying $2 to keep up with the lives of celebrities seems too expensive from where I stand. Then again, I’m not a big fan of gossip “news.” The questions is – are you willing to pour $2 a message for such a service?
[Via: smh.com.au, textually]