When the Twitter accounts of such icons as Britney Spears, President-elect Obama and Fox News were hijacked earlier this month, the story quickly became one of the hottest topics online.

So it was natural for anyone looking for hits to jump on the bandwagon.

Few do this kind of thing as well as the satiric former tabloid Weekly World News, which proudly broke the news, “BIGFOOT TWITTER HACKED.”

Followers to the @weeklyworldnews Twitter feed could click on a link that brought themto the humor newspaper’s web site, where they found a screen grab showing that @originalbigfoot had tweeted some untrue words about his supernatural friend, the Loch Ness Monster, “Nessie is Gay.”

“Bigfoot is embarrassed and infuriated at this identity theft. He wants to formally apologize to the Loch Ness Monster for any emotional distress this has caused, and reiterate that he has no opinion on the Monster’s sexuality,” a representative from Cryptids & Humanoids Alliance Against Defamation supposedly told the Weekly World News on Bigfoot’s behalf. “Bigfoot’s twitter followers know he would never write such a sophomoric attempt at humor. He asks that twitter find and prosecute this hacker to thefullest extent of the law.”

Is this kind of stuff a colossal waste of time?

Many may think that riding on the coattails of real news events to generate click-throughs is folly. Yet the business plans of organizations like Weekly World News and the Onion tell another story.

While no longer sold at supermarket cash registers, Weekly World News was recently acquired by a private equity firm that sees a solid revenue stream from licensing the rights to silly, other-world characters like Bat Boy and PhD Ape. There’s even an off-Broadway musical about Bat Boy, with high schools and university drama departments paying healthy fees for scripts and lyrics.

The B2B reasons for being on Twitter are compelling.

When BMW wanted to make sure its sporty Cooper Mini was targeted to a young, hip demographic, they arranged for a paid placement in a Weekly World News article about Bat Boy being involved in a high-speed police chase. The humanoid’s car of choice was,of course, a Mini.

Sure, there are plenty of speakers’ bureaus and modeling agencies from which to cull celebrities for trade shows and events. Those who want a supernatural event will send a direct message to @originalbigfoot.