Warner: Sheen Fired From 'Two And A Half Men' and Charlie Tweets For An Intern

LOS ANGELES -- Charlie Sheen was fired Monday from "Two and a Half Men" by Warner Bros. Television following repeated misbehavior and weeks of the actor's angry, often-manic media campaign against his studio bosses.

The move was taken after "careful consideration" and is effective immediately, the studio said in a statement. No decision has been made on the show's future without its star, said Paul McGuire, a Warner spokesman.

The actor, who has used TV, radio and social media to create a big megaphone for himself, was not silent for long.

In a text to The Associated Press, Sheen responded, with the F-word and "They lose," followed by the word "Trolls." Asked if he planned to sue, Sheen texted back, "Big." As for his next move, Sheen texted, "A big one."

A call to his attorney, Marty Singer, for comment was not immediately returned. 

Star Wants To Hire Intern With 'TigerBlood'

Sheen might be out of work, but he's hiring.

Shortly before CBS announced Monday that it had fired Sheen from "Two and a Half Men," the actor tweeted Monday that he wants to hire an intern to assist him. The tweet is a paid-for endorsement from the year-old website Internships.com.

"I'm looking to hire a winning INTERN with TigerBlood," read the message.

The posting on Internships.com describes the position as a paid, eight-week job for the summer to "work closely with Charlie Sheen in leveraging his social network."

The application form isn't exactly extensive: Applicants must summarize themselves in 75 characters or less.

The partnership was arranged by start-up ad.ly, which connects celebrities with advertisers for social media ads. Sheen has officially signed on with ad.ly after the Beverly Hills-based company consulted with him last week to familiarize him with Twitter.

Asked whether Internships.com had any reservations about partnering with Sheen, CEO Robin Richards replied, "Charlie Sheen is an A-list actor for seven years in a row."

"We thought we could really highlight and help students and companies realize that this resource was available for them," says Richards, who is also an ad.ly board member.

Ad.ly earlier helped Sheen join Twitter and get his account immediately verified so that users could separate the real Sheen from the many copycat accounts. Sheen took little more than a day to reach 1 million followers, a record. He had more than 2 million followers as of Monday afternoon.

All the attention has brought a huge amount of exposure to the business of social media advertising. Though companies have been working advertisements into Twitter and Facebook for more than two years, it's a sometimes unnoticed practice.

"A lot of people know about the business now," says Ad.ly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh. "It's a validation of the business that we're building and the overall industry changes that we're a part of."

Micro-endorsements can net a celebrity anywhere from $1,000 to the low five figures per tweet, with ad.ly's top celebrities earning about $10,000 per tweet. Ad.ly and Internships.com declined to discuss the financial arrangements of the deal with Sheen. Pricing is frequently structured on the number of clicks an advertiser gets via the ad, with $1-2 per click.

Ad.ly's roster of celebrities with whom it has worked include Mariah Carey, Kim Kardashian, Chris Brown, 50 Cent, Paris Hilton and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. In the last year, it has placed 24,000 endorsements for 150 brands and raised more than $6 million in venture capital.

Last year, ad.ly was behind a tweet sent by Snoop Dogg, sponsoring Toyota: "These homies know the deal. Wonder if this swagger waggon can fit 22's? SPINNIN!"

A staff of 22 includes several workers who specialize in writing such tweets in the voice of the respective celebrity.

Gullov-Singh sees celebrities as "the driving force of social media."

"Brands want to get their arms around social media and celebrities are social media," Gullov-Singh says. "So that's where we set off to connect to the dots and create value."

There are other start-ups with a similar focus, including Izea, Assetize and Magpie. But it's also not only a specialized business, with many individuals and companies making arrangements without a third party.

The Orlando, Fla.-based Izea, founded in 2006, put together a 12-day campaign for Microsoft with Sean "Diddy" Combs sending a Microsoft-tagged message once a day for a week on Facebook and Twitter. It included giveaways, charity donations and an Xbox contest.

"It's got to be relevant to someone's fans or someone's followers," says Dan Rua, chairman of Izea. "The driving effort is really: Make sure the conversation is relevant to the people involved. If you're giving quality, relevant content that gets people excited, then you're going to do all right."

Advertising in social media, though, has its risks. One of social media's most popular characteristics is its seemingly unfettered access to celebrities. Though ads are required to be disclosed, any relationship becomes less personal once someone is hawking Toyotas. But at the same time, entertainers supply a wealth of content to their fans on social media for free.

"There's always a group of people that think everything should be free. That's just naïve," Gullov-Singh says. "When we started ad.ly, our friends at Google looked at us scornfully and said, 'How can you be polluted the stream?' We said, 'Dude, look in the mirror. Look at your company. Your entire business is based on putting ads on everything."

"Celebrities are creating content and they have a right to monetize it," Gullov-Singh adds. "Otherwise, why should they do it?"

Social Responsibility & Haleigh Cummings

Some thoughts that come to mind when I think about Haleigh Cummings and Caylee Anthony and other children that have gone missing - and robbed of life;

THE WORLD THAT HALEIGH CUMMINGS WAS BORN INTO

The convolution to sort through over a simple single event of a child gone missing – is mind boggling, when it would only take one person to just come forward with the truth.

The lengths that people connected to this case have gone to obscure and cloud the discovery of Haleigh is a shining example of just how damaging drug abuse is to an innocent child born in its’ midst.

It is the core cause of this case from the beginning and I firmly believe that society as a whole has a social responsibility to these innocent children, not only to report drug addicted parents to the authorities, but a greater responsibility for the judges who oversee and administer the law to ensure that these unfit drug addicts “parents” lose their right to “raise” and “influence” their offspring and are additionally prevented from bringing any more children into the world and continuing this cycle of abuse.

Only by cutting off the poison tree branch from the trunk can society hope to foresee a future of health and optimistic possibilities – a scenario which has been in decay and decline for way too long. I believe in second chances, but there comes a time when enough is simply enough – and in this case. enough was enough a long time ago.

Let’s keep up the good fight, society. A socially responsible person’s concern is about bettering the environment they live in, no matter what it takes in spite of what the irresponsible says, thinks or feels. Just because they live in fear of being found out doesn’t mean that they should enable us to fear them, either by retaliation – or by any other means.
It’s time courage takes the lead – and “right” outweighs “might”.

And hopefully, there will be less Haleigh’s and Caylee’s in the world to worry about – and the norm of having a child a day gone missing will be a thing of the past. All it takes to care for a child that you may think is in harms way – is to make a simple phone call. A proactive stance – before the damage is done is the only way to protect and insure our most valuable investment in societies future.