Britney Spears has become the latest celebrity to open an account on the Twitter micro-blogging service, although it remains unlikely the pop icon is the one updating her profile.

(Credit: BritneySpears.com)

On BritneySpears.com, fans can "Friend Britney" not only on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Britney's own "VIP" social network, but also Twitter.

Fellow Twitterers can get updates like "OMG!! 7 hours until Womanizer premieres!!!!!!!" ("Womanizer" is Spears' latest hit single) and "Hey paparazzi ... Rolling Stone cover rumors? Too bad you weren't inside the shoot. Brit had a great time and was dancing around the set."

Twitter isn't known as a tool of the teen-pop set. The most popular accounts on the micro-blogging service, according to analytics tool Twitterholic, are currently either politicians (Barack Obama), tech industry heavyweights (Digg's Kevin Rose, blogger Robert Scoble), or news outlets of one kind or another (CNN's breaking news, the Mars Phoenix).

In Australia, opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has recently joined.

Mainstream forays into Twitter typically deal with news and politics. However, the PR teams behind many celebrities, particularly bands and singers, have built ways for fans to subscribe to text-message updates and announcements for quite some time now. A Twitter account could be a cheaper and easier way of doing pretty much the same thing.

ZDNet.com.au's Renai LeMay contributed to this report.