A big thing happened last week in the world of social networking/lifestreaming site, Twitter. One of the largest media moguls in the world — Oprah Winfrey — decided to sign up. This came on the heels of other celebs like the NBA’s larger than life, Shaquille O’Neal, actors Jimmy Fallon, Ellen DeGeneres, Ashton Kutcher and wife, Demi “@MrsKutcher” Moore, and political savant, George Stephanopoulos joining Twitter’s ever increasingly popular ranks.
Not surprisingly, this created a bit of an uproar on Twitter, especially among folks that have been with it for a while and have been organically growning their follower base during that time. Personally, I could care less because I probably won’t follow Oprah on Twitter. Not because I don’t like or admire what she does but because she’s just not my cup of tea. The same is true with Shaq, Ellen, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.
While some social media folks are taking a balanced if not slightly positive outlook on this phenomena:
- Rick Calvert of Blog World Expo thinks that Oprah would be a great keynote speaker at Blog World Expo 2009
- David Armano of the Dachis Group thinks that Twitter’s rapid growth will help it venture “further away from an obscure internet service to something that could potentially enjoy Facebook like numbers”.
- Vindu Goel AND Jenna Wortham of the New York Times find her newbie like approach charming.
I’m coming out in the Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research’s camp of this is a good thing for not only Twitter, but social media and online community in general. As Jeremiah points out in his post, What Happens When Twitter Gets Mainstream Attention, “[with Oprah joining Twitter] expect more brands to jump on board, and within a few months”
Therein lies the beauty of someone like Oprah joining the Twitter ranks. As a leading driver of public opinion and preference — my friend Tim Moore of Pearson says there are two “market makers in the world of bookselling , Oprah and NPR’s morning edition — Ms. Winfrey is endorsing the legitimacy of social by willingly participating in it. If Twitter or “social” is good enough for Oprah, it’s good enough for the millions of Americans to participate as well. And with more participants comes a greater opportunity for businesses to engage, deepen loyalty and ultimately make money.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m selfish for wanting this to happen on a number of fronts. First and foremost, this “Oprah-ization” of Twitter and thus the world of social should help my company, Powered as we create social marketing programs for big companies. It will also help friends and family members realize that I haven’t completely wasted my last three plus years with all of my blogging, podcasting, Facebooking and Twittering.
Filed under: Engagement Marketing, Social Marketing
Here’s the problem–the celebs (not all, but most) aren’t there to be social. Ashton Kutcher has a million followers and follows less than 100 back. They aren’t using it for conversation, truly, they’re using it as another platform to promote themselves.
I don’t think they should follow back everyone, obviously, I don’t even do that…but if they were truly engaging on this platform it would be more conversation, less “hey lookatme, I’ve got 1 million followers.”
Sarah – you make an excellent point about some of these new celebs not being that social. One thing I have noticed is that with folks like @RainnWilson (Dwight on The Office) and Ashton Kutcher (@APlusk) are engaging in conversations even if they don’t follow everyone back.
One thing I think we’re going to start seeing more of — especially with tools like TweetDeck that allow us to better monitor keyword terms AND @ replies is people that follow fewer people back but that do engage others in conversation.
Either way, I appreciate you chiming in. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Best,
Aaron | @aaronstrout
I have been calling this the “Year of Listening” and I think that Aaron is right about the new age of social media will be filtering and being able to drink from the firehose. When businesses, and I hope celebrities, figure this out they will be better able to interact. Time will tell to be certain.
I agree that the adoption of Twitter by celebrities like Oprah can and does serve to fast-track the “acceptance” of social media for companies as well as people we know, but I’m not sure how long the influence of an @Oprah can last if her use of Twitter is a temporary dalliance. She has, as you put it, “join[ed] the Twitter ranks”, but she could just as easily go AWOL.
If Twitter doesn’t resonate with her after the initial honeymoon and orientation period all new users go through and @Oprah goes silent, (or worse, if her account ultimately ends up being run by ghost-tweeters who broadcast and don’t listen), how much of an influence for acceptance is she (or any other celebrity user) then?
Or is the simple fact that these highly-influential people have merely dipped their toes into the social media waters enough to drive the acceptance of the medium.
Either way, I agree with you both, Aaron & Jim: right now the ball is well and truly rolling in social media and on the web in general in terms of content creation. As has been the case with information workers for years, it’s even truer today: filtering of the data and content will be key to success in (and indeed enjoyment of) business, social media, and whatever else you do in the modern age.