Why Are All Your Favorite Stars Giving Out Their Phone Numbers?

What you're more inclined to receive is targeted messaging from your celeb of choice, perhaps promo for their latest project or simply their random musings, all of it unencumbered by the increasingly restrictive algorithms of the traditional social media networks (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) that make it hard to guarantee anything you release into their ether is actually ever seen by every last one of your followers.

As OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, whose band is among one of around 300 celebrity acts using Community to connect with their fans through text messaging, told Billboard this month, over 20 percent of their audience at an August performance at Denver's Red Rock Amphitheater engaged immediately with the band once the venue's monitors displayed their personalized phone number, more than they'd ever received on social media. 

"Nobody else should have your fan's information other than you — the fact that Facebook owns all of it and we can't have access to it unless we want to pay exorbitant fees is ridiculous," he explained, adding, "When I’m trying to tell people in Philly or in Shanghai, 'Hey, we’re in Shanghai and we're going to pop up at this record store, we’re opening up the final thousand tickets that we’ve saved until today,' I can’t do it [on social media]. People in Lima, Peru, are responding, and the Philippines, and Houston, and it just becomes white noise. If someone doesn’t have that app open at that moment they’re not getting that that post. If they’re not trolling Twitter or if they’re not currently on Instagram, they’re not going to get that. [Community] cracks the code on that for me."

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