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So apparently Jennifer Aniston ended her relationship with John Mayer because he didn’t have time for her, but did have time to keep updating Twitter. Meanwhile Ashton Kutcher makes national news in several countries after posting a Twitpic of wife Demi Moore’s bikini-clad bottom.

For those of you with an inquisitive nature, the image is still available.

Besides the gossip angle of celebrites on Twitter (For that I’d recommend @heatworld, one of the titles I work on), it raises interesting questions about both the nature of celebrities when they’re increasingly interacting online, and also the nature of relationships playing out in public.

Will Twitter mean more ‘real’ celebrities?

Twitter undoubtedly gives the appearance of closing the gap between the public and celebrities, even with follower numbers of top stars reaching huge numbers (hundreds of thousands follow Ashton, Demi, and John etc). But does it also put more pressure on celebrities to produce content which previously would have been filtered by their relationship with the press?

Rather than deciding to work with the press and paparazzi, or spend their time trying to hide from the media, will celebrities feel they need to increase their popularity by updating on an ever-increasing basis, and perhaps giving more insight into their lives than they might have usually allowed, in the same way as ‘regular’ people?

Will it also start to change the current mainstream obsession with style over substance, leading to a greater popularity of celebrities capable of creating content of interest?

What about relationships?

As more couples and families are likely to appear on Twitter, as they have on Facebook, it could have serious implications for the people involved. Already there have been tragic cases involving social networking, such as in the UK, when a man murdered his estranged wife after she changed her Facebook status to ’single’. But Twitter could be potentially more problematic due to the space it occupies between instant messaging and previous social networks.

The nature of @replies, and the speed of interaction could see public arguments occurring when couples monitor who their partner is interacting with.

Will we all have to think about not just how we present ourselves, but also how our families and relationships are presented and available online – in the same way as celebrity couples have needed to manage themselves in the past. And will that effectively flip for those celebrities who have a happy and interesting partnership, as they’ll benefit from the ease with which they can reveal details and interact publicly online?

Is this the blurring of the celebrity continuum, so that the megastars at the head of The Long Tail, and those in the tail, are seemlessly joined without some of the segregation between those who are labelled as famous and those who aren’t?

With Twitter just celebrating it’s third birthday and social media still in the troublesome teenage years, the pace of change and the effects it will have are only going to accelerate in the future – it might be worth checking with your significant other about their online plans now, rather than later!

It seems like every day reveals another celebrity using Twitter. Today I stumbled across two!

Lance Armstrong doesn’t really need an introduction as a 7-time winner of the Tour de France, and also an inspirational figure who overcame cancer. There’s also Livestrong, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, uniting people to fight cancer. He’s tweeting at @lancearmstrong.

Meanwhile Will Carling is the former captain of the England Rugby Union team, with 72 caps from 1988-1996, as well as playing for Harlequins. He captained England to two Five Nations triumphs in 1991 and 1992, the final of the 1991 World Cup, and a 1995 Grand Slam. He’s at @willcarling.

Add that to a list of sporting stars including:

• Andy Murray
• Shaquille O Neal
• and?

If you’ve spotted any other sporting stars, past or present, let me know in the comments. And don’t let it stop you if they’re on Plurk, Jaiku or Identi.ca instead!

I’ve realised that although I’ve been blogging just as often at my social media blog, TheWayoftheWeb.net, my frequency here has slipped a bit.

I’m starting to wonder whether that’s due to the fact I’m spending more time on my day job and other matters, or whether the financial situation etc has meant less focus on the microblogging boom? There is certainly a change of focus by the majority of blogs I’m reading, and what coverage remains in general blogging is generally all about Twitter and monetisation. Perhaps it’s also the fact Twitter has led the way to the mainstream with the arrival of celebrities from the wider world, rather than just social media agencies and bloggers!

I don’t think a period of slight consolidation is a bad thing – for one thing it might allow us more time to consider which applications really are more useful, and which are just adding to the noise. It might also give me a bit more time to actually play around with alternatives to Twitter. I gave up on Yammer after just a few days, and suddenly found in my absence a new group of colleagues had joined! I rarely get a chance to Plurk, Pownce or Jaiku (can any noun be a verb?). And then there’s getting a decent camera to use with Seesmic, Mobatalk, 12 Seconds etc.

Then there’s updating the tools list – for instance, there’s a new, improved version of Posty to play with (v1.6). And getting some more interesting people to interview about their microblogging or their application.

And there’s the long-needed recommendations for the other blogs which focus on their area. I have a few in my RSS list and more appearing all the time, so it’s about time I shared some link love.

I might even get time to find where all my other volunteer authors on here have vanished to!

So a bit of a quiet spell definitely wouldn’t be a bad thing – but I just know there’s a revoluntionary new app or tool around the corner!