Half million following Socks’ blog on Twitter
Published 10:36 pm Thursday, May 21, 2009
NEW YORK — He’s one of the most popular users on Twitter. More than 500,000 follow his growing celebrity, his every adventure and, well, his cat naps.
Meet Sockington, www.sockington.org. Twitter’s latest star is a microblogging cat who regales more than half a million with his musings on meal time, personal hygiene and the view from the top of the stairs.
Sockington, or “Socks” for short, is the cat of Jason Scott, a 38-year-old computer administrator from Waltham, Mass. Since late 2007, Scott has been tweeting from Sockington’s perspective — and finding a “Socks Army” of followers. (Many of his followers are pets, too.)
Dogs and cats in social media isn’t anything new. Many have made Facebook pages (there are applications for both “Dogbook” and “Catbook”) and Web sites for their pets.
The difference on Twitter is that the running thread of Sockington’s feline commentary takes on the dimension of a comic strip. Scott has created a character with a particular voice by tweeting messages from Sockington’s point of view like: “I must say no comment to the whole dining room incident. No questions please.”
“He’s kind of functioning like a ‘Garfield’ comic,” says Scott. “He’s like the 21st century Garfield.”
But in a way, Sockington is a parody of Twitter, where even a kitty cat’s life — his daily trips to the litter box, his insignificant household travails — is beamed out to the world.
