[People ★★]
(P1) Lady Gaga dominates the social media world. The queen of pop has more followers on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube than any other person in the world.
(P2) Even though she lost her number one spot on Facebook to Rihanna she is still the overall social media star. Lady Gaga has 41 million Facebook fans, almost 12 million Twitter followers and 1.6 billion YouTube views.
(P3) Forbes, a leading business magazine, has recently named Lady Gaga the most powerful celebrity on earth.
(P4) Lady Gaga’s social media success started a few years ago on MySpace, a social media platform that, at that time, was as popular as Facebook. In 2009, her team started concentrating on Facebook.
(P5) Today Lady Gaga’s social media success is based on a great team that supervises her fan pages and the star herself who tries to have as much contact with her fans as possible. She connects to her followers daily on Twitter, which she manages herself.
(P6) No other pop star in history has made so much success so quickly. One reason is that Lady Gaga, often compared to Madonna, is not scared to try something new. Apart from creating games for mobile phones the staff of the pop queen launched GagaVille , a virtual world with games, music, and many surprises.
WORDS: 212
SOURCE: http://www.english-online.at/news-articles/people/lady-gaga-queen-of-social-media.htm
VOCABULARY: dominates, spot, overall, celebrity, platform, concentrating, fans, virtual
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
If you found the passage difficult to read or had problems understanding specific words or idiomatic expressions, please discuss them with your tutor. The following discussion questions should be answered in your own words and with your own arguments.
- Briefly, summarize the content of the article in your own words.
- Do you like to listen to Lady Gaga’s music? Why or why not?
- What are some disadvantages of social media?
- What are some advantages of social media?
- Do you use Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube? Why or why not?
EXPRESSIONS or PHRASES: What do the following expressions or phrases mean?
- Queen of pop (P1)
- Number one spot (P2)
Image source: by Stephen Carlile