Oprah On Twitter and the Nosedive Begins

By Craig Agranoff April 17th, 2009

Well, here we are, boys and girls. If you’re a Twitaholic, then you should know by now that your days are numbered. Soon, it will be a cold room in rehab, fingers twitching for any keyboard or keypad, while you recover from your addiction. Why?

Because Twitter is now on Oprah and that means that the social networking phenomenon is about to go Soccer Mom. Yep. Twitter will soon change its name to “Twitamom” or “Tweetalicious” or some other Baskin & Robbins name. Don’t be surprised when the new Onstar has Twitter functionality.

2570979445_8f3d4c4d2b1 Am I exaggerating? Have I made too much of the Oprah on Twitter phenomenon?

Well, her first message says it all, folks. I’m sure she had multiple writers knocking heads while they came up with this brilliant, sub-140 message: “HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21ST CENTURY.” Those are her caps, not mine.

Now take that piece of literary prose and couple it with this other little fact: at the time of this writing, she’s only been tweeting for 3 hours and she’s already got 113,000 followers. Eat that, Ashton Kutcher!

So now that Twitter is dead, CEO Evan Williams has hit rock star status, and the company watches itself balloon out of control…what do we do now? Twitter has no business model, no income stream, and is already busting at the seams.

If you were online Wednesday for the big TEA Party protests—many of which appeared to be taking place on Twitter—you know that the system is at its breaking point. Many Tweet feeds were almost half an hour behind. Others literally stopped working entirely for several minutes.

Well, now you’ve got every jobless soccer mom in America signing up for Twitter too. A lot of them have iPhones as well, so expect them to start sending each other messages that are even more banal than the ones already flooding the Tweet stream.

“Oh, isn’t little Joey so big? You’re a big boy, Joey! YAY!”
“q35oaovohaseyh – that is from my 2 year old, isn’t she smart!”
“i am sendng u ths from my cell. How conexted!”

Somebody please prove to me that all is not lost. I’m about to take a sledgehammer to my notebook!

Twitter Spins Out of Control: The Planet’s Axis in Peril

http://everdred.multiply.com/ Everett

Well, now you’ve got every jobless soccer mom in America signing up for Twitter too. A lot of them have iPhones as well, so expect them to start sending each other messages that are even more banal than the ones already flooding the Tweet stream.

A ringing endorsement of Multiply, if I've ever heard one. If the way in which someone you don't know, and have no connection to, is able to disrupt your enjoyment of the service by simply using it the way in which it was intended, the service simply isn't well suited for relevant sharing. What is this, Myspace, where everyone is “in your extended network”?

On Multiply, if you're inundated with banality, it's because the people you know are banal.
http://hempygeek.com/wordpress/2009/04/17/oprah-on-twitter-and-the-nosedive-begins/ Oprah On Twitter and the Nosedive Begins | HempyGeek

[...] Now take that piece of literary prose and couple it with this other little fact: at the time of this writing, she’s only been tweeting for 3 hours and she’s already got 113,000 followers. Eat that, Ashton Kutcher!…. Read Full Story [...]
http://www.mommybloggerdirectory.com Holly

Actually, there was already a very large community of moms on twitter before Ashton Kutcher or Oprah discovered it. They haven't broken or disrupted the system yet, so I don't think it's really safe to assume that just because Oprah is covering twitter that the SAHM moms are going to ruin the system. They've actually been a very influential group both on twitter and the blogosphere, raising thousands of dollars towards charities and enacting change in the world. I personally built an entire website based on this fact, internet savy moms are already a very large and socially powerful group.
Bradley

Great analysis, especially where you cite all the other Web phenomenons that tanked due to popularity.
Bradley

Great analysis, especially where you cite all the other Web phenomenons that tanked due to popularity.
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[...] Oprah On Twitter and the Nosedive Begins | Rev2.org http://www.rev2.org/2009/04/17/oprah-on-twitter-and-the-nosedive-begins – view page – cached Because Twitter is now on Oprah and that means that the social networking phenomenon is about to go Soccer Mom. — From the page [...]

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