Horror genre master Stephen King has joined Twitter.
I wouldn’t mind, but he’s only sent out 18 tweets and he’s already got 190,000 followers. Still, I suppose writing blog posts on technology isn’t quite as far-reaching as writing hit novels for the past 30-odd years.
He told the world on Friday: "On Twitter at last, and can’t think of a thing to say. Some writer I turned out to be," to which fellow writer Neil Gaiman responded "flee, Steve, flee! Run away now, while you still have your sanity!"
Gaiman, who has a not insubstantial 1.9 million followers himself, wasn’t joking, either. Among those he thanks in his latest book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, he graciously includes those 1.9 million people, for crowdsourcing knowledge on short notice, but adds that without them he could’ve written the book in half the time.
With Salman Rushdie last weekend announcing his intention to sign off from Twitter for a while to finish a book, you have to wonder how much people will hear from Mr King, a prolific writer by all accounts.
I’m following the writer and am excited to see what kind of insights we’ll get into his day to day life (part of the attraction of the site for fans), but I doubt they’ll be of the ‘the toilet’s blocked’ variety.
And thank goodness for that.
The social networking site throws up all sorts of fantastic thoughts, ideas and links every time I go on it, but if I had to choose between King going around with an iPhone glued to his fingers, telling us he just took the garbage out, or him writing books at his usual frightening pace, I’d go with the latter.
