Twitter starts to feel the Oprah effect, but for how long?
By Dave Parrack
Oprah Winfrey is not only the queen of daytime television in America, she’s also a barometer of whether something has hit the mainstream. Last week saw Oprah start using Twitter, live on her show nonetheless, and as expected the Oprah effect has gone into full swing.
I love Oprah, you love Oprah, everybody loves Oprah. And Oprah loves the fact that she can make or break all manner of things which fall under her radar. Be it certain celebrities, other television shows, or new pieces of technology. If she says something is cool then her loyal viewers will believe her, and if she says something sucks, then according to them it does.
Twitter has been growing in popularity at an increasingly fast rate. The last few months have seen the already-upwards pointing line on the graph turn to the stars. On April 17, Oprah showcased Twitter on her show and guess what? The number of users to date graph is now almost vertical.
Twitter hasn’t yet released any official numbers on how the Oprah effect has helped it gain users, but a report from Internet traffic monitors Hitwise shows the effect Oprah had on the micro-blogging site. Not only did the number of visitors to the site increased by a huge margin but a whopping 37 percent of those visiting the site on the day of the show were first-timers.
This isn’t too surprising as the Oprah effect has been shown to have amazing properties over the years. After all, those millions of moms and students who watch the show need something to keep them entertained when the credits roll. And it seems many of them spent the weekend checking out Twitter.
Amazingly, for a site which is known for its constant downtime (the Fail Whale cometh) it seems to have held up since Oprah gave Twitter its seal of approval. The sites has still had outages but no more than normal.
It’ll be interesting to see how long the Oprah effect lasts for. Will those people who signed up to follow Oprah and see what all the fuss was about keep using the site? Will Oprah herself keep tweeting, or at least getting one of her many paid lackeys to do so for her? Could this be the moment when Twitter finally became mainstream? Only time will tell.
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April 23rd, 2009
Oh, to be touched by the hand of Oprah. This may solidify Twitter as a tool for following celebrities – somehow I don’t think that was the original idea.