It has only been a couple of weeks since the news of Prince George’s arrival took over the Twittersphere in the UK and across the world, and now another Prince has taken over a  number of users’ news feeds.

Prince Rogers Nelson, or just ‘Prince’ as he is known to most of the world, started to use the microblogging site earlier this week. While the profile, ‘3RDEYEGIRL’, has been in existence for quite some time now, it had previously only been used by his band members. However, the pop-star made his actual Twitter debut on Wednesday with a slightly confusing post reading “DID EYE ADD 2 MUCH PEPPER?”, along with an image of his latest meal.

The news has shocked many of Prince’s fans as he has something of a turbulent history with the internet. In 2010, he was quoted in an interview with UK paper The Mirror as saying:

“The internet is completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else.”

He then went on to threaten eBay, the Pirate Bay and YouTube with legal action for misusing his music. More recently, Prince challenged Twitter’s video-sharing app Vine in an attempt to get every video which featured his music removed.

While Prince has a sizeable following stretching across all ages, his hey-day is considered by most to have been the 1980s. As the age of the average Twitter user is increasing steadily, the singer may have realised that the site could be the perfect way to keep in touch with his original fans after all.

Businesses which target older consumers may not have considered using social media as part of their promotional strategies before, but with sites like Twitter and Facebook adding users of all ages every day, it may be the perfect time to start. Providing the content is tailored appropriately, there’s no reason why such a campaign can’t be effective.

Graeme Parton

Graeme has experience creating content for online sources and for the radio, and at university he studied Multimedia Journalism.