Twitter’s transparency offers an interesting, mostly speculative, window into the minds of celebrities. Speculative, because you can’t always confirm who is tweeting, even in the case of verified accounts.
Kanye West (@KanyeWest) being one noteworthy exception; you just can’t fake his tweets.
The same transparency (and speculation) applies to the official Twitter accounts of countries, like say, North Korea.
Who are North Korea’s 13 Twitter friends? (h/t Hacker News)
There’s some obvious debate about whether the account is legit in the Hacker News comments. Apparently, internet is very scarce to North Korea’s citizens.
Still, analyzing why one account is following another account is more interesting when the former represents a country or is a celebrity.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as transparent about reasons, or lack thereof, as Conan O’Brien (@conanobrien) was.
I seem to recall reading that the account is actually maintained by a person or persons outside of North Korea who is/are sympathetic to the regime. The murkiness over who actually manages the account makes it a little more difficult to draw conclusions from the account’s following activity.
Does it really matter if Kim Jong-il is sitting at the keyboard or not? I like to picture the Team America puppet shaking his little fist at the twitters.