

Oprah ads 1 million+ users to Twitter. - coglethorpe
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/20/how-many-new-twitter-users-post-oprah-a-lot-maybe-over-a-million/

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pierrefar
Summary: first use a method to measure user counts that wrong, then apply
voodoo to make the stats seem good, throw in compounding factors that most
certainly affect the user count, forget about controlling/discussing other
factors, and then publish on a high profile blog.

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lpgauth
Oh TechCrunch....

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bbuffone
My revised headline for the article. "@oprah signs up 1.2 million people to
twitter; 800k of them to dumb to actually follow @oprah."

She only has 377k followers. If people signed up because of her you think they
would follow her if they could figure it out.

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wallflower
> If people signed up because of her you think they would follow her if they
> could figure it out.

Oprah messed up trying to post to Twitter on her show (refresh instead of
update was clicked)

Oprah is a major celebrity who admits to not being able to know everything
(that is part of her appeal to soccer moms ala Julia Childs dropping stuff
while cooking). The interesting thing is that some social media experts
pretend to know everything and/or are indistinguishable from an automated bot
that tweets out article links/quotes (read any social media "expert"'s tweets
to see what I mean), while some celebrities demonstrate or at least pretend
that they are human/normal on Twitter.

"Yes, it's happened. This morning Oprah Winfrey joined Twitter (@Oprah) during
her show. Her first Tweet: "ASHTON IS NEXT!" was very anti-climactic. Instead
of hitting Update, Nate Berkus hit Refresh. So it went to Twitter purgatory.
Her first successful Tweet:"

[http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/social_nets/jumping_the...](http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/social_nets/jumping_the_shark_or_a_whole_new_begining_for_twitter_114374.asp)

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eli
_If that pattern is correct — and there isn’t much to suggest that it is, but
bear with me..._

No thanks.

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jonknee
I found out I'm #1766. Yikes! Oprah should put me on retainer, she could have
been way ahead of the game.

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redrobot5050
Now Twitter has reached its manifest destiny. Millions of stay at home moms
twittering about the funny thing their cat/dog did, followed by "My god I wish
there was something on...Oprah, where are you when I need you?"

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rms
Flagged for being stupid.

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pierrefar
Can we have a "this is stupid" flag here on HN? Not just a simple flag like we
currently have, but an explicit stupid flag. Pretty please?

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rokhayakebe
Is she using IE on her Apple laptop?

