As a former New York Giants football player and NFL on Fox anchor, Michael Strahan was used to appearing in the sports-world spotlight.
But his life drastically changed a few months ago, when he took the co-host seat with Kelly Ripa for Live! and attracted a different type of audience than his die-hard sports fans. That meant he had to change the way he thought about social media -- after all, his personality was onstage and ready for judgement from both football fiends and stay-at-home moms.
We recently sat down with Michael to ask some of your questions -- from who writes his tweets to what kind of phone he uses, plus a new tech startup he's backing. Here's what the big personality had to say.
Q&A With Michael Strahan
Have you changed the way you do social media since joining Live! With Michael and Kelly?
This is such a personality-driven show. So, now social media is more about letting people know your personality -- it's an extension of what people see on TV. And the show also gives me an opportunity to make people more comfortable with me. When I use social, it's like an extension of that voice. People can judge how I am saying something, how I am supposed to be perceived, but on Twitter, they kind of get a better feel for who I am.
Do you write and send your own tweets?
I write them and I send them myself. You can read some tweets and say, “OK I know someone sent that out for that person. They're not that smart. I know that.” [Laughs] You know when it's PR, and for me -- it's just me. I don't like anybody else having that kind of control over my life and possibly somebody's opinion of what I am thinking. So, I do it all myself.
What kind of phone do you carry?
I have several actually. I just got a new one the other day from Microsoft. It's nice. Yeah, I like it.
So, do you have the iPhone 5 yet?
I have an iPhone 5, as well. I like it. [Pauses] The Maps stuff, you know, of course there's an issue with that. The battery still doesn't last. Like, I need a battery that lasts. The plug being different creates problems when I go to a hotel room and I want to plug it in and listen to my music. So, eventually I'll need an adapter. You know, all in all, it's a cool phone. There are some cool things you can do on it. I'm happy I got it, but I am just waiting on everything else to catch up to it. And once that happens, I'll be even more happy about it.
You're now behind 12Society, a tech startup where athletes and artists hand-pick cool stuff for their fans to buy. What is your favorite thing you've chosen so far?
You know we were laughing on the show about manscaping. I enjoy the manscaping product. [Laughs] ... These products are a representation of you. It's not like you can just throw something in a box and say it's from Michael. It doesn't work that way. And we have to put products in there that we really use in our life. I don't want somebody else to out-do me. I want to out-do all my partners [Blake Griffin, Tim Lincecum, Nick Cannon], so I think it becomes super competitive in that sense.
If you had to dress up as something that would be "meme-worthy" for Halloween, what would you be?
So, you don't mean Honey Boo Boo?
Oh no, you could totally be Honey Boo Boo if you want to.