Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Update: As of 7:30 p.m. Sunday EST, Scotty McCreery has taken over the Twitter follower lead with more than 12,500. The only other contestant to top 10,000 at that point was Paul McDonald with about 10,950.

Rounding out the list: 3) Casey Abrams with about 9,250; 4) Lauren Alaina with about 9,000; 5) Thia Megia with about 8,450; 6) James Durbin with about 8,050; 7) Stefano Langone with about 7,300; 8) Pia Toscano with about 7,150; 9) Jacob Lusk with about 5,450; 10) Karen Rodriguez with about 4,500; 11) Haley Reinhart with about 4,400; 12) Naima Adedapo with about 4,050; 13) Ashthon Jones with about 3,450.

American Idol unveiled social media accounts for each of the Idol finalists Friday. If you haven’t checked them out at americanidol.com, I’ll tell you where to find them below.

This is the second straight year Idol has tried this. If I recall, it started in the semifinals last year, and Idol pulled the plug pretty quickly.

Anyway, if you’re wondering, and this may surprise you, the contestant with the most Twitter followers  is Paul McDonald, with 8,164 as of 12:30 p.m. Saturday.

But Scotty McCreery is closing the gap quickly with 8,062. When I last checked, around 9:30 Friday evening, Paul was up by about 700.

Only two other contestants have topped the 6,000 mark — Lauren Alaina with 6,292 and Casey Abrams with 6,174.

That’s a pretty darn big gap between them and the front-runners. Wonder whether it’s any real indication of how much fan support they have or how the voting will go next week.

Rounding out the top 13 (and I’m rounding the numbers because they change pretty quickly): 5) Thia Megia with nearly 6,000; 6) James Durbin with about 5,300;  7) Stefano Langone with about 5,000; 8) Pia Toscano with about 4,950; 9) Jacob Lusk with about 3,400; 10) Haley Reinhart with about 3,100; 11) Karen Rodriguez with about 3,100; 12) Ashthon Jones with about 2,300; 13) Naima Adedapo with about 2,200.

I’m not sure how much stock you can put in those number. Many fans probably don’t even know these accounts exist yet.

And I’m hoping no one is following the Idols expecting to have some great secret revealed, like what they’ll be singing next week. I’m pretty sure the Idols are under strict rules about what they can and can’t tweet.

But the tweets sent out already reveal this. The Idols moved into the mansion Friday. And they’re impressed.

Tweets Jacob: “Hey everybody….Moved into the idol mansion today….WOW Dreams come true.”

Tweets Ashthon: “Omg this place is amazing!!!! Cali is beautiful thx God for a second chance last night.”

And Ashthon and Scotty are already tweeted about being in the recording studio with Jimmy Iovine.  Ashthon assures all her track is “bangin’.”

They couldn’t already be recording the song they’re going to sing next week, could they?

See, that’s what I mean about these tweets. Sometimes they raise more questions than they provide answers.

Other new revelations:

* Naima tweets that you pronounce her last name “Ah-day-dah-po”

* Lauren has sent out one tweet, saying she needs help figuring out Twitter. OK, maybe she’s more like Kellie Pickler than I thought.

Anyway if you’re interested in following them, friending them, etc., the accounts aren’t hard to find.

For instance, Casey Abrams are:

www.twitter.com/CAbramsAI10

www.facebook.com/CAbramsAI10

www.MySpace.com/CAbramsAI10

Just substitute the CAbrams with the first initial and last name of your favorite contestant, and you’ll wind up in the right place.