Tracy Morgan Enters Twitter Universe

We all know how much actor Ashton Kutcher loves to tweet, and all about his infamous, and slightly silly, contest with CNN to be the first Twitter user to have 1 million followers.

But did you know that Tracy Morgan just succumbed to tweeting mania? The comic actor, who shines on NBC's comedy "30 Rock," jumped in with both feet just two days ago, and his second tweet was, as expected, not printable on good clean sites like Tonic.com.

Now you're wondering, so why link to it or even write about it? Well, we link because that's the value of online sharing.

I'm writing about it because Morgan joining the ranks illustrates just how compelling the microblog tool has become these days. As a TVGuide.com article relates, Morgan begrudgingly opened a Twitter account in a bow to public demand -- Web sites were calling on him to join and both the growing legion of fans and the lobbying effort obviously caught his publicist's attention.

In less than two days, and after just five tweets, Morgan already has nearly 32,000 followers. That's pretty powerful, given that Morgan didn't do anything to grab that interest, and his posts certainly can't be deemed "compelling" by any stretch of the definition. And he's only following 24 people in return.

And, yes, I am following him, but I did so because I felt it only right, since I tend to use other people's follower lists for my potential "good follow" subjects.

In fact, I'm finding that reading a person of interest's follower list is much more interesting than most of the tweets being tweeted (no offense, fellow twits).

I mean Morgan, of course, is following his own show's Twitter account, nbc30Rock, and fellow comedians both on his show and off, including Ellen DeGeneres. But he's also following People magazine and that's quite a kudo for that publication, I would think.

And just think about this Twitter aspect for one second. Who you follow provides tremendous insight into you as a person and as a professional, as everything from your interests and your friends (and those not your friends, obviously) to your political leanings (Morgan's following Obama) is often reflected in that "following" column.

Then again, there are some who aren't giving up such personal insight. One is comedian Kathy Griffin, who jumped on the Twitter wagon purely to push her new book. She's got more than 200,000 followers but her comedic majesty has, so far, not chosen to follow anyone. Not even as a joke or jab at her favorite comedic targets like Oprah Winfrey.

That, I believe, might just be another first in the world of celebrity tweeting.

Photo courtesy of Mild Mannered Photographer, via Flickr