On April 17th, 2009, Oprah Winfrey spoke loud and clear in under 140 characters. Like many others, she joined Twitter. So what does it mean when the queen of all media gives Twitter its blessing? We’ve certainly seen what it has done for books.
The era of ”Twitter AO” (after Oprah) will be an interesting one. Just when we thought the little giant that could couldn’t get any bigger, it gets the most influential plug anyone could ask for. Twitter was already growing at a rapid rate, but with Oprah’s arrival, the numbers are likely to double. After her Friday “Twitter” show, traffic to the site was up 43 percent compared to the previous Friday. All this makes us wonder: When will Twitter start being too good to be true?
At the moment, Twitter is free, simple to use, and makes it possible to reach hundreds, thousands, or millions of people (depending on how active you are–ask Ashton Kutcher). So where’s the catch? Eventually there has to be one. After all, there’s a lot of ”tweet” money to be made. The Twitter bathtub is close to full and the faucet is still running. When a social media site grows at the rate that Twitter has grown (estimated at 1,000 percent annually), it starts experiencing growing pains. The site is already dealing with technical difficulties on a daily basis due to the amount of visitors using it. Twitter will have to be improved (adding to the price of maintenance) and traffic will have to be managed. It seems only fair that companies who use it daily/hourly as a fast way to reach their target audiences should be charged a service fee for “connecting with others”. Same goes for the media who “tweets” breaking news. And if they have a problem with these changes? Well, it’s hard to remember the last time anyone challenged what Oprah was selling. Twitter now has the upper hand on all other social media platforms, not only based on numbers, but on legitimacy. Let’s hope they use that hand gently.