Talk show host Oprah Winfrey has taken control of her own Twitter name, @oprah, she announced on her Facebook page today. And tomorrow, she’ll start using it, on her show.
Apparently, her guest tomorrow will be the man she calls “the King of Twitter,” Ashton Kutcher. I’m sure he’ll be talking about his race for a million followers on the service (he should be there by then), and presumably about his pledge to help fight malaria in Africa if he crosses the million mark before CNN.
Knowing this, Twitter CEO Evan Williams tweet from earlier today makes a lot more sense. “Tomorrow just became a very big day. (Sorry for the teaser — more later.),” he wrote. And it should be a very big day indeed. Oprah is known for her loyal (some may say “rabid”) following, as she can turn any book or product she talks about on her show into pure gold. And Twitter will likely be no different. I suspect Twitter may see its biggest one day jump in new sign ups tomorrow — certainly, it will be the largest influx of women of a certain age group into the service in one day.
After a month in which it gained some 5 million new users, one might wonder how Twitter can sustain such growth. Well, getting an endorsement from Oprah will help — big time.
Oprah’s Twitter account has “just” 30,000 follower as of the time of this writing. Come tomorrow around this time, she should have well into the hundreds of thousands. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her pass both Kutcher and CNN, eventually. But tomorrow, Kutcher will undoubtedly see his Twitter followers see a huge surge as well — especially if he does talk about helping the fight against malaria.
Of course, I still wonder if the race for followers isn’t hurting Twitter as a medium in some regards, but there’s no stopping Oprah.
Thats fine with me. A person who still doesn’t see the value of this “service”. Besides the real live data searching, I think it’s completely pointless. And here we go…
All I can think is her saying:
“It’s time to tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet”
Now that celenobrainities started twittering, Twitter has lost a lot of appeal. Similarly to Facebook which also started to be annoying once the masses adopted it.
Let’s move on! What’s the next thing after Twitter?
So, would you contend that email lost it’s appeal or usefulness once “the masses adopted it”? I would definitely argue the opposite – any communication tool becomes more and more useful as its user base increases.
Checkout Zahdoo.com – read they are launching in few days. Supposed to be private, shuns oversharing, no wasting time knd of stuff and they actually recommend not spending more than 10 mins on the site, focus on productivity with some cool features such as mind mapping, auto-tagging etc..they also have semantic search guide.. too good to be true
@Jay b: Yawn
you’re doing for zahdoo what opah is doing for twitter. cute
People at techcrunch should see a doctor and take an action against their twitter mania
I did. No cure.
Sure there is. More cowbell.
Yeah, I think we all saw this Oprah thing coming…hopefully it doesn’t destroy what the creators set out to do…
Well, whatever becomes popular lands on Oprah’s show. Soccer moms can flood Twitter with new accounts, it will not change a thing for me (or most people) in the end. But I am sure Ashton will win the race with this!
I hope Ashton wins! he’s a little behind at the moment.
Only 4k behind CNN
I see the value of the service — It’s like IM (which monetized really nicely).
Not that I want to jinx it but – I hope it does not go down during the show.
Yes, that has to be a concern.
Given the strain on the system lately, I don’t see how Oprah’s first tweet can’t do anything but summon the failwhale, or replace it with Cloverfield.
Love it. Everyone should tweet.
why? why should everyone tweet?
because if used right and if you can clear through the bullshit, it is a sea of useful information that can help basically all walks of life. The scary part is whether its usefulness becomes more apparent and powerful before the media and celebrities bring the brainless to it from MTV and reality shows. We need people to get smarter and not just be an impressionable demographic that marketers and media outlets drool over.
I would love to see younger generations use it to help them get ahead but I seem to think that we’re getting further away.
Oprah, I have no problem with because she does good and helps people. But, races to a million followers for the sake of selling more more video games and ashton to promote those stupid cartoons, it has the potential to be a disappointment. I hope not.
Oil up the fail whale and keep him on standby!
The fail whale will be in FULL effect tomorrow.
I think twitter might have that covered though. I hope they’re ready.
oh yea. i see the Fail Whale coming tomorrow…
Personally, I’m more interested in how 4chan is trying to mess up the Ashton Kutcher vs CNN tweetfeud with the @BasementDad account.
Time to move to friend Feed once the beta goes live
Wouldn’t it be REALLY funny if Oprah tried to tweet and twitter servers went down – as usual?
Oh, someone already said this. Sorry.
Forget the whale. It’s shark jumping time.
Best line yet.
noooooooo here marks the end of Twitter as we know it
Maybe it’s just be but it feels like there are already A LOT of moms on twitter. It’s mostly either moms or “social media gurus”. Not saying that’s a bad thing but I think soccer moms already do own a substantial portion of the service. Any data out there about that?
http://www.thew...war.com/twitter
So you don’t say it? Let me say it for you: There are too many frustrated housewives, self-centered moms and self-proclaimed social media gurus on Twitter.
And you know what? I couldn’t care less, as I’ll be leaving Twitter very soon. Like I left Facebook.
I predict she will get a million followers in one single day. Oh and you can watch real time updates of ashton vs cnn here – http://tweetbur....com/tweetrace/
If it gets my mom on Twitter, then I’m all for it. The potential for families like mine that are spread out to keep in touch is huge with Twitter. I’ve been trying to explain this to her.
Anyway, I think Oprah will hit the million mark in 2 days, max. There’s big (Twitterverse as it stands now) and then there’s BIG (Oprah), no pun intended.
Perhaps a simple-to-use group messaging tool would be more appealing and less intimidating to your mom. Check out http://www.tatango.com/
or just send an email, gasp!
Everyone is tweeting all of the sudden.
I’m sorry I wouldn’t follow Oprah on twitter if you paid me. The woman is so self serving its disgusting. Who cares.
Gotta’ love it. Tomorrow millions of tweets about Twitter being tweeted on Twitter. oh the humanity…
…and I’m hoping Ashton jumps up on Oprah’s couch professing his love for Twitter.
That would be classic – I wonder how many times we’ll see the fail whale ?
I don’t think she will use Twitter as it’s intended. She’ll write a few of the posts herself the first couple of days, then pass it off to some non-paid intern to update. And then I don’t even think they will interact with people. It will only be updates the push out “new article”, “new book club book, buy it now”, “buy this”, “buy that”. “Oprah” already has over 30,000 followers but is only following 7. That’s not interacting with your fans.
Couldn’t agree with you more. You predicted it.
True… And given Twitter’s scalability problems, we’ll start seeing the whale like back in the day.
True. I think a lot more good could be spun out of Twitter (using it to raise funds for the underprivileged or raise awareness of them) – well, not discounting the fact that Kutcher has used the cause (10,000 bed nets for Africa) to get his following up on Twitter, I suppose that’s a good thing in a way. But otherwise, this does feel like celebrities just wants to tell their fans, “I’m on Twitter!” but not actually be there. Either that or just push their own agenda as part of the whole popularity contest and 1 million followers race.
Oh, my. With all the delays @ Twitter today, I foresee an Oprah Fail Whale! But I am THRILLED Oprah is promoting Twitter.
Let’s hear it for ANY MOM taking over Twitter..! Sure better than the current bunch of PR/Marketing/Tech/Digg goons who think they can own it…
Love live MOMS @ TWITTER!
LOL!
I love Oprah. She’s a media beast.
Twitter and over privileged 40 something women. ahhh…I can see it now.
I do wonder how this influx will change things. There are just 6 degrees of separation. I already have hard time keeping down the re-tweets I get from rabid followers of other topics.
Now I understand what this whole ‘Oprah’ deal is…twitter will be flooded…I agree with the masses above…fail whale sightings…
It will be a Friday afternoon…I’ll chill out on TC
)
BTW I did NOT reach 1 Mil followers.
~daddy bookins
Awesome I like this women
I’m kind of glad. I was a bit disappointed recently when she did her big show on Facebook and I was thinking she was behind the times.
But I do see lots of fail whales in the next few days!
Just what we need. Soccer moms clogging up the works. Sure she will have important stuff to say.
Good job at ruining another good thing Oprah.
GAME CHANGER.
The game is over. I’ve been telling people, that by the end of this year, Oprah will tweet. I can’t believe it’s happening so fast!!!
I’m doing a video on this today
@successfool
I think this is great and the end result actually helps those who are in need. The ones complaining about it aren’t seeing the bigger picture.
Good, I love Oprah and I’ve always wondered why the other celebs never interact online as themselves. Good for Oprah; Oprah is an open person anyway.
Be nice to Oprah, she has feelings, also.
Love ya Lady O!
iQon!
I don’t seem to remember anyone making such a fuss when I joined Twitter! Hmm, maybe its because I don’t have a successful international chat show, yup that could be it.
I’m sure Oprah will say to her viewers – “Also don’t forget folks, Phill Mason will soon to hit 1000 followers and although he doesn’t have the global clout that Kutcher has, he still does his bit for charity were he can, so follow him also, he’s alright”………..Won’t she?
I agree with blackbabie09, who cares who, what celeb and where, if some people in desperate need actually benefit from this kind of publicity, then that can only be a good thing.
Sure people are a little too obsessive over their follower count, but if that pushes them into helping those less fortunate than themselves, then I’m all for it. Hold on Twitter founders, things are going to start to get a little bumpy.
I think basement dad will challenge that
http://twitter.com/basementdad
Oprah is brave for doing this. This is online, people can be pretty crude and cruel, online.
This opens Oprah up for all types of criticism, all types, and all kinds of praises as well; to tweet(twitter) is very brave of her to do, given her celebrity status, and the pampering of the feelings of celebrities.
Personally, I would love to see Bill Gates, twitter. I love Bill Gates just as much as I love me some Oprah. Bill Gates, rocks. But, you’ll never see him participating in a forum he basically engineered, internet protals, hence Windows Internet Explorer.
Mostly or all web pages travel through, Windows Internet Explorer(portal), unless one is using a different browser.
Oprah, please tell Bill Gates, iQon said, Hi!…lol!
iQon!
Oprah is nuts. I tip my hat for her bravery.
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
800 676 8530
When I first started Twitter (late Januaryish?) and had no idea what to do, I went to ‘find people’ and I typed in Oprah..I found a few of them and followed the one that I thought was really her. She was tweeting and making comments about what was going to be on her show and these show’s happened. So, I thought it was really her? I even wrote a post about Oprah on Twitter. Some time later, after that post, she disappeared. Then I had seen tweets about ghost celebs and guessed that is what happened and why she disappeared. Good to see her making a public come back and look forward to it. I really hope Twitter can handle it and not get any slower than it is at times….ready to feed it prune juice O.o
While I do have a Twitter account, I find that I’d have to be on there all day for it to actually be of any value to me as a way of communication with friends. I typically use it to keep updated on technology news.
The random millions of new Twitterers will fall off sooner rather than later. Most are on there to follow celebrities and because the relationships on Twitter aren’t mutual, they will quickly get over it … There will be a surge tomorrow, but it won’t take long for people to realize that @Oprah (and even @aplusk) are only replying to few and far between and that they aren’t actually following any of their fans.
To be honest: It’s actually getting annoying (and narcissistic) that the celebs are competing for followers … worse even is that it’s now actually become news!
It’ so interesting to me to read all of the comments on this post,but the one that got me to comment was the one above.
I have made more real new friends from Twitter than I have ever made in my entire life-and I am 52 (no kids-no soccer).
When I say “real” I mean real. As in “real life.” MANY of my twitter friends are now real life friends,too.
The keys : 1. real 140 convos at a consistent time each day with a consistent group of people 2. always help others first-even your competitors 3. own the niche where you have the most expertise-in my case-furniture and interior design 4. try to really help at least one person each day that you’ve never tweeted with before-see where it leads! 5. participate in #followfriday.
If you don’t get the reason for Twitter now-you will if you do the above.
I am blessed DAILY with opportunities for my business, for friendship, for helping others live their dreams.
And, for those of you dispariging “soccer moms”-those Moms are often the very ones who have the time to contribute many thousands of volunteer hours to help the community you live in-if you are doing the same- I honor you. If not, well, maybe think twice about knocking them?
Twitter will become mainstream for a while.
Early Twitter adopters will look for a new place on the Internet as it won’t be cool anymore.
As always trends get passed on from early adopters to first followers to mass market to the laggards.
I am willing to bet money on that Ophrah’s first tweet will be the most ReTweeted Tweet in Twitter history.
Great! I’m not the only one new to Twitter then
I’m so new! Really have no clue what I’m doing!!
Yeahhhhh!
Solution – Everyone follow MG and take him to 2 million.
Welcome to Tweeterville Oprah!!
Oprah Fail Whale http://digg.com/d1oyF2
If you go to her Twitter page and hit refresh a few times you will see her Twitter following rising so quickly it is almost insane.
I’m sick of Twitter. It’s last years social networking dope.
What? CB radio is FUN!!!!!!!