MC Hammer Talks Twitter

OK, I’m a groupie. I fell in love with @mchammer at the break at #twtrcon. He was standing in the hall in a beanie and a tshirt talking about music and social media. I overheard him say that he was studying social media because it was useful in music, because music is an inherently grass roots and social activity.

He thinks that social media takes music from the real world and naturally extends its reach.

Speaking at #twtrcon, he tells how he started writing his autobiography on Twitter.  “Between 1962 and 1970, every male leader I knew was assassinated. Where were you?”

He says he never uses a ghost for a personal brand.  His whole concept is to “remove the velvet rope.” He doesn’t broadcast and he wants to engage the average person and get their feedback — about life in general, not just about specific projects.

I’ve been following @MCHammer since he got on Twitter. It was easy to see he was authentic.

For him, as a content creator, the objective is to shorten the distance between the content creator and the consumer without the middlemen.  He’s excited about rich media — movies marketed on Twitter, with revenue sharing with cable companies, saving millions in marketing dollars.

Hammer now has a voice: without paying fees. @mchammer knows who is tweeting and who is not among the celebrities. “If you tell me to view this with Ajax, I know you’re not understanding that so you’re not tweeting for yourself. But I’m not gonna blow your cover.”

What the platform does is take away the shield. You’re out there without the perception management that has been created by handlers or teams. And to  Hammer, this is good. People who are serious about Twitter are real, without ghosts.

He thinks perception is more important than reality. Tweeting that you are getting drunk changes the perception of who you are. Could take away the value of an endorsement.

“One of the things that’s intriguing is that social media is not from Pluto. There was socializing before there was a platform. Social groups are just an extrapolation of life into the digital world.”

How do you protect yourself from digital squatters? “Be an early adopter. Get to know the founders early.” –But he also says he deals with things like that with lawyers.

MC Hammer has watched himself in newspapers and magazines for twenty years. What he is finally able to do is define himself.  He says Twitter is exciting because it allows him to take back control of the perception of himself. He tweets about himself. “Big Hammer meets Little Hammer” in his tweetstream is about when  @mchammer met Hank Aaron in 1975.

He can’t answer everybody, but he tries to respond generally to questions.

You can tell that this man has given a lot of serious thought to social media. More impressive. He has been blogging for five years!