Kanye's mess could be advertiser's opportunity

Some have blamed the cognac. Others think he's just a little left of loopy.

But Kanye West certainly got them going on Twitter when he wandered on stage to upstage country singer Taylor Swift as she accepted the Best Female Video award at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday.

West embarrassed himself by grabbing Swift's mic and making a rather creepy mess of his self image. Should you wonder what caused West's bizarre behavior, well, it appears he was upset that Beyonce didn't win. If only he'd waited till the end of the ceremony, he would have been able to applaud from the safety of his seat; Beyonce ended up winning the rather larger kahuna, the Video of the Year award.

He also might have prevented a frenzy of tweeting, including from those present at the event. The wondrous Pink, for example, tweeted: "Kanye west is the biggest piece of shit on earth. Quote me." (I do anything Pink tells me.) However, this sudden, frenzied burst of tweeting does give one pause for further thought.

Trendrr figures suggest that 293,024 tweets were dispatched by outraged or, perhaps, supportive beings in the single hour after West let his sense of occasion drift beyond Antarctica and keep going.

With Twitter changing its terms of service and now dedicating itself to the pursuit of advertising lucre, one wonders just what opportunities brands might have to pursue instant tweeting audiences like the one inadvertently delivered by West.

Naturally, there is a certain joy to be experienced in the thought that it was West who sparked such extraordinary Twitter activity, when he is truly, deeply, and perhaps even madly anti-Twitter. In May, he made it very clear just how upset he was that Twitter housed Kanye West impersonators and demanded to have his name returned to him.

I wonder whether he wants it back now.