Why Twitter can damage your emotional and commercial life

Twitterising your life can damage your emotional, commercial and financial life.

The Hollywood stars Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are prime examples of this. They tweeted their every bump, grind and grin in carefully varnished detail. That was fascinating at first, certainly as they were one of the first famous couples to do this. But then that could only last so long.

Their publicly tweeted intimacy has now become their universal indignity.

They were feeding off the people who feed off them: we’ll give you access to the inner workings – or lack of them, as turned out – of our lives in return for your loyalty, love and loot. Come and watch us in our jim-jams at home and then at the cinema and embrace and buy into our brand with open arms.

Unfortunately, Ashton, who, at 33, is 16 years younger than the pulchritudinous @mrskutcher, ended up, it’s claimed, with a vigorously accommodating twenty something party girl who embraced him with more than open arms.

So, after 6 years of tweeted marriage, Demi and Ashton are tweeting their separate ways.

The problem is that even for high profile people like this they will need some privacy, especially when times are tough. But, if you live by the tweet your relationship will die by the tweet, to rephrase an old saying.

Liz Hurley, a British woman who somehow appeared in some films as a result of once appearing at a film premiere wearing some large safety pins with a dress attached, and the Aussie cricket legend Shane Warne, also like to tweet the delicate details of their lives. They even flirted with each other before dating. How stylishly romantic and intimate. How long before that goes pear-shaped too.

Social media is great and is gaining momentum in our society. And the Demis, Ashtons, Lizs and Shanes of this world will claim their tweeting is edgy but also carefully commercial. Perhaps.

But, certainly if you’re high profile, whether as a person or as a business, being too revealingly intimate on social media runs a greater risk of reducing the mystique that attracted people to you in the first place.

In this regard, whether personally or professionally, at what point will you know when your social media revelations could make you less revered by your target audience?