Oprah to Tweet on Friday’s Show

By Sterling “Chip” Camden
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

What’s the big news that Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, hinted at earlier today?  Oprah Winfrey will tweet for the first time on tomorrow’s Oprah show, which will feature famed tweeter Ashton Kutcher.  Her account is already active, and as of this writing she has 32,607 followers – increasing at the rate of about 15 with every browser refresh.

We can confidently project that after tomorrow’s show airs:

• That number will skyrocket
• So will the number of Twitter users (especially in a certain demographic)
• So will the number of people following Ashton Kutcher – he’ll probably bounce right over the million follower mark.
• So will the number of times Twitter goes down.

Regardless of what you may think of Oprah, she has an amazing power to lead her followers (pun intended) en masse into any activity that she promotes on her show.  Unless she has something negative to say about Twitter, this may be the moment when Twitter becomes a household word for more than just the social-media-savvy Internet population.  Provided, of course, that Twitter avoids turning off too many of these new users with its legendary failures, signaled by the arrival of the Fail Whale.  There’s even a Fail Whale Fan Club, “Celebrating Twitter and our favorite error page cetacean.”

As Veronica Sopher said:

Forget the whale.  it’s shark jumping time.

Is this Twitter’s big intro?  Or will it be all over once the fat lady tweets?