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Though fan club organization never was an exact science, the explosion of celebrity sites online has made the form even more cosmic.
“Many people as me if fan clubs are obsolete, and in fact, the internet is opening fan-clubbing up to a whole new group of people who would probably never have become involved before,” Kay said. “While traditional fan clubs published newsletters, advertised through magazines and fanzines, the turnaround time of correspondence was 10 days at best. Now it’s all immediate.
The availability of chat rooms and message boards online has also added another dimension to the instant-gratification factor. Said Mulcahy, “If you ask Brad Pitt a question and he responds to it, you’re gonna feel. ‘Wow, when has that ever happened before?”
“I go to our message board two or three times a day,” said Lynne Margosian, who runs an “official” club/Web site out of her Freeport, N.Y. home, devoted to the pop music group the Cowsills. “Even if we don’t always put something down on the site, we’ll at least monitor it every day.”
Margosian, a fan of the band since 1937 (“I was young and they were kids”), ramped up the site about three years ago with four or five other “hairheads” (the Cowsills’ cover of “Hair” from the Broadway musical topped the pop charts in 1969).
“Pen-pal lists are great, but of course letters take time to send and receive,” said Kay. “And apart from conventions and fan meetings, it was hard for a large number of fans to communicate with one another on a regular basis and share information and ideas. Now it can be done immediately via the chat rooms.”
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