We saw that Britney Spears’s Twitter got hacked. We follow Lance Armstrong’s workouts and Schwartzenegger’s budgets. I even blogged about John Cleese, because he’s a friggin genius.

Right now, much of traditional media doesn’t care about internet media. They don’t see it as a money making medium and compared to movies in particular, it isn’t yet. Frankly, I think it’s because advertisers put too much stake in click throughs and not enough in branding, which is why they buy ads on TV. They also don’t appreciate that the majority of journalists have admitted to taking stories from blogs so it is important to appeal to the early adopters who blog.

It is imperative that celebrities use online media to manage their reputations…period. Say disaster strikes. A budding new actor who happens to be married is snapped in a photo with a cute blond. The photo is broadcast on TMZ and in the Star the next day. With social media, celebrities can speak directly to the public and say, “Hold on there, she was my wife’s interior decorator”. And then that wife can say, “Yes, it’s true”. TMZ would never publish that because controversy sells. By staying ahead of the game and speaking directly to journalists, bloggers, and the general public, the situation is diffused quite easily.

Social media takes out the middleman which is traditional media. It gives you more audiences and more interesting perspectives since just about every traditional journalist is in New York or LA, but online media is not. Celebrities can promote themselves as much or as little as the please, in any way they see fit and to the audience. The slow, expensive filter that is traditional media is no longer the only means for spreading word about projects and it certainly doesn’t tap into the diehard fans the way online media does.

Why else is it important? For the same reason that the first thing you should buy when you launch a career or a business, you should buy your name as your domain name with all of its extensions. By snatching up profiles on all the major social networks, you are protecting your brand from impostors. You are reserving the right to use that profile at a later time. Considering traditional journalists are continually getting fired and social networks like Twitter and Facebook are constantly on this rise, this is becoming more and more important.

What is the most compelling reason to use social media? Because it humanizes a celebrity. It’s the reason we read “People” and watch behind the scenes. We want to know the people behind the character. Social media doesn’t rely on journalists to do this and it is a two-way street instead of one-way communication. The prospects for how this communication can affect art are immeasurable.