Twitter Founder Ev Williams went on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to talk about his San Francisco-based micro-messaging startup, and in the process turned his red hot company hotter. It’s not clear how many people are going to sign up for the service following the broadcast of Oprah’s show (and her subsequent twittering), but one thing is for sure: It was going to test Twitter’s infrastructure. And so far, Twitter has passed with flying colors. As Rich Greenfield, analyst with Pali Capital wrote this morning: “Oprah is more of a ‘movement’ than a TV personality or entertainer (and the movement is called ‘Live Your Best Life’). Consumers across the world listen and absorb whatever Oprah does/says and today she has begun to Twitter.”
According to web site traffic monitoring service AlertSite, so far the Oprah bump hasn’t brought down Twitter’s web site, even though there was a significant increase in the response time for the site. Ken Godskind, chief strategy officer of AlertSite said: “Twitter didn’t behave any different because the Big O showed up and Twitter was holding up better today than earlier this month.” In other words, Twitter prepared well for the big event.
It’s too bad that these celebs who have so many fans, never respond to any of them. They probably don’t even see the messages that are sent to them. It makes it rather frustrating to be on twitter and talking to yourself. LOL
Some celebs actually do respond on Twitter, here is a good example: http://sesquipedalis.blogspot.com/2009/02/finally-use-for-twitter.html.
Twitter really is a user-owned brand. If users follow twits that only push information one way, they they turn it into another advertising platform. If users follow only those who participate in 2-way conversations, then it will remain a social media platform.
Your link didn’t work Joe, but I believe you.
@Cindy – Search Shaq on Twitter in the Google search bar, then click on: A foot and a half: Finally, A Use for Twitter
This is so true, Although I do enjoy chatting to myself on twitter quite often!
Cindy
that is a very fair point. unfortunately there is very little celebs do beyond broadcasting and perhaps from that perspective it is still a one way, web 1.0 world despite the new tools of being closer to their fans/followers.
I’m new on twitter. From all that I read about it before joining, I guess I was a little mislead into thinking everyone could chat with everyone. I didn’t realize that your comments can’t be seen unless you are being followed by that person. It kind of burst my bubble lol. The big advertising when a new celeb joins (as in Oprah’s case) obviously is to draw more people to twitter who will be talking to themselves along with me 🙂
Actually, that is not totally correct. Yes, in order to see most of your general comments, someone has to be following you, however, if you send an @reply message to someone’s @username, it is seen by both your followers and is sent to the person’s @username or @allmentions tab on the right. They may or may not see it right then, live if they are online or check their phone, but most folks read they’re mentions of their @username. If they reply to you, that reply is seem by all of their followers too.
That is a great way to find and get more folks to follow. Interact with someone who shares your interests and some of their followers might follow you too. If I follow you, and I follow Shaq and you send a tweet to @The_Real_Shaq or reply to him, both he and I have the potential to see it, but I might miss it, as it is not directed to me, if I am not online at the time, or don’t check out your messages from that afternoon, (unless you put my@username in it too).
Another way conversations get started is when someone retweets something you said, or you read an RT, then engae that person about the subject.
In reality, most normal people on Twitter do follow you back, and people do talk with each other, quite a bit. It’s just that most Celebrities don’t, some like Shaq do. Most of the time it’s not like high school, most folks are adults, and play nicely in the pool as it were.
People follow each other for many reasons – you have something in common, they find something you said interesting or funny or cool or unique, they like your username, they sent out a link to information they find valuable, they followed you because someone they like or respect follows or interacted with you.
The celebs may be fun, but most of the real action on Twitter is with the regular old peeps.
Hi Cindy,
Actually when you make an update it will be visible to everyone, click on the “Everyone” link inside twitter, everyones updates will be fed into there, from there they could be searched up using Twitters search. Happy tweeting.
Cathy and Freight, thanks for the info. As I said I’m still a newbie and not sure how everything works. I have sent messages with the @ and a persons name, so I guess they just didn’t bother responding.
It’s a fun site nonetheless. Again, ty for the learning lessons!
Twitter is like a breath of fresh air on the Social Media scene. I have been on it for just a few weeks now and I have met several interesting people. It is a platform to network with people you would like to meet in real life. Check me out!!
http://twitter.com/spryka
This is ridiculous. Twitter is becoming more of a racing ground for celebrities than a social medium.
Om,
Thanks a million for covering this.
I didn’t see any further issues after we discussed this @ 6:30P EST on Friday.
There was some performance issues on Saturday, April 20 that were not seen during
the rest of April’s Saturday’s so far.
Best regards,
Ken Godskind
Chief Strategy Office
AlertSite
http://www.alertsite.com
Oops. Meant Sunday, April 19th not Saturday in my last post.
Sorry for any confusion.
Ken Godskind
Chief Strategy Officer
AlertSite
http://www.alertsite.com
It is worth watching Andrew Keen’s talk to Google in ’07 here! (http://tinyurl.com/24zzgg) Much of what he says is increasingly relevant today as Newspapers are imploding and more is likely to follow. I also wrote my own opinion of the ramifications of this engagement of Twitter by celebrities entitled “Twitter Breaks Down the Wall Between Star and Fans – What a nightmare?” here – http://tinyurl.com/d7e58e