Twitter is enjoying explosive growth, that much is obvious.  Great way to connect with fans, but the nagging complaint is that tweets are mostly unimportant time-wasters, full of inane, shallow details.  But some artists – really big artists – have a different gripe related to privacy, imaging, and even the drain away from creative time.

The latest is Miley Cyrus, who just nixed her two-million-strong account.  Some credit an over-controlling boyfriend (Liam Hemsworth), though Miley pointed to a total lack of privacy, including the tendency of gossip sites to twist every tweet into a news item.

This is hard to take too seriously, especially with Miley posting a ridiculous 80s-style rap on YouTube to explain her departure.  Jimmy Fallon is just one comedian having a ball with this, and the Cyrus episode is juicy material for bits.  But the 16-year-old Miley is dissing a platform that already has problems attracting the teenage demographic, and the move certainly opens the door for similar exits by other artists.

But Miley is hardly the pioneer.  Kanye West never started an account, though he did rail against the company for allowing imposter accounts to proliferate.  Kanye, like Miley, pointed to a serious privacy compromise and a needless distraction.  “Everything that Twitter offers I need less of,” Kanye blogged.

Who else?  After diving in, Trent Reznor dialed away from Twitter, reflecting on the compromises that come with a non-stop, up-close-and-personal communication stream with fans. This is worth exploring, because the hangover of a super-connection is that a certain mystique is lost.  Reznor said as much, and smart artists are thinking critically about the shrewdest ways to use connection channels online.

The conventional thinking is that artists should constantly tweet, vlog, post, and update to keep their fans interested and engaged.  But without some element of mystery and crafted charisma, a certain magnetism is gone.  In that light, perhaps tweeting – or over-tweeting, for that matter – is just too up-close, too hyper-connected, and an imperfect communication channel for some artists.

Paul Resnikoff, Publisher.