Stream-of-consciousness Tweeter Kanye West has doubled the number of people he follows on Twitter, adding a person he once offended during an awards ceremony to a stable that used to begin and end with a bloke from Coventry.

Until recently West infamously only followed one person on Twitter, a guy from Coventry called Steve who was as mystified by the attention as the rest of us.

Now it appears that Steve has been dumped in favour of YouTube teen sensation Justin Bieber. Poor Steve, as worse than this he has also missed out on the chance of being a strange bedfellow with Taylor Swift.

The addition of Bieber, and dropping of Steve, is almost as surprising as the addition of Swift, as it was her best video acceptance speech at the MTV Awards that West ruined by jumping on stage to tell the teenager, and the world, that Beyonce's Single Ladies effort was the better promo.

West, who usually has something of a Midas touch, found that this action backfired, though Sneak can't work out how it would have 'fired' in anyone's favour, and got the sort of positive, welcoming attention that rabid snakes carrying knives usually get.

Although he apologised at the time and apparently had this accepted by Swift, he had an epiphany over the weekend, and revisited his shame, offering Swift his Twitter attention, and a song.

While at the end of August the rapper was only posting middle of the road messages like, "Do you know where to find marble conference tables? I'm looking to have a conference... not until I get the table though", and, "She asked when is fashion week.... uuuum...I thought it was every week??!!", the mood seemed to change over the weekend.

In a stream of messages Kanye veered between self-pity, to contrition, to apology, causing us all to wonder whether he could have saved himself some time by giving Swift a call or something.

The chain of Tweets on Swift seems to start here: "Man I love Twitter... I've always been at the mercy of the press but no more...," he wrote. "The media tried to demonise me... Even now a lot of articles start there [sic] first 2 paragraphs about how much of an a***ole I am... I feel like they were waiting for the opportunity to go in all the way on me and when it came they beat me to a pulp...They wanted yall to believe I was a monster in real life so you guys wouldn't listen or buy my music anymore..."

West has decided to shower Swift with the gift of music, and in a totally unpatronising entry added, "I wrote a song for Taylor Swift that's so beautiful and I want her to have it. If she won't take it then I'll perform it for her. She had nothing to do with my issues with award shows ... She deserves the apology more than anyone.

He then goes on to thank Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams "for creating a platform where we can communicate directly".

Yeah! Take that Alexander Graham Bell.

06 Sep 2010