The makers of Amercian Idol have shut the official individual Twitter, Facebook and MySpace pages of the semi-finalists on the show.

The ninth season of American Idol, which features Simon Cowell as a judge, marked the first time that the 24 contestants have been allowed to run their own social media pages. However, the individual accounts have now been closed in favour of one official contestant website on each social media service.

A theory that has emerged across the Atlantic is that the accounts have been pulled because the show's makers were concerned that the number of followers each wannabe star attracted might give away likely results and diminish suspense, threaten ratings and potentially even lucrative interactive voting.

One digital reputation expert argued that the show had made a mistake by cutting back its use of social media.

"There is obviously a loose reasoning behind the decision but this is in fact a huge oversight by American Idol," said Louis Halpern, author of Personal Reputation Management and chief executive of agency Halpern Cowan. "The show has made it impossible for contestants to develop direct relationships with their fan bases.

"A more progressive approach would have been to take social media follower counts as first-hand public feedback on the show, helping those contestants without high traffic numbers to better communicate with American Idol fans and ask what they want to see from them on future shows."

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