It is the universal sign of a new idea going mainstream: Oprah Winfrey is bestowing her endorsement on Twitter.

Oprah Winfrey

The woman who can single-handedly send a new product or book flying off the shelves has just joined Twitter. She has not yet written a tweet, but more than 30,000 followers have already signed up to follow her every 140-character thought, and the number is growing. Rumor has it she will write her first tweet on Friday, when she is dedicating her show to Twitter. (It airs at 4 p.m. Eastern time — check your local listings here for details on viewing the show in your area.)

Ashton Kutcher will be on the show, according to Oprah’s Web site. He is one of Twitter’s most active celebrity twitterers and will most likely talk about his race with CNN to be the first to get a million followers.

Maybe Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, will be on the show, too. He mysteriously twittered this message Thursday morning: “Tomorrow just became a very big day. (Sorry for the teaser — more later.)” The blogs went wild. An acquisition? A partnership with Google? An update on his wife’s pregnancy?

More likely, an appearance on Oprah. Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, told me that Friday’s news will be “more exciting for Ev personally but also good for Twitter.”

Oprah is already following the twitterings of both Mr. Williams and Mr. Kutcher, as well as Demi Moore, Ellen DeGeneres, Gayle King and George Stephanopoulos.

Twitter’s popularity has been soaring in the last few months — according to Compete, a Web analytics firm, Twitter had 14 million unique visitors in March, up from eight million in February.

Oprah’s blessing will surely send traffic to the stratosphere as a flood of new people discover the microblogging service. It will also test the service’s ability to handle the increased traffic — just imagine if Oprah logs on and gets the famous Fail Whale indicating that the Twitter service is overloaded.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/twitter-gets-the-oprah-treatment/

• FREE SEO and Ads optimized wordpress blog set-up consultation
• FREE 7 Day Video Boot Camp
• Why not generate your own leads? Download FREE Attraction Marketing Manifesto
• Learn how to personally sponsor 254 reps in one year. This free 1 hour interview
  reveals how!
• Succeed or We’ll Give You $300 for Your Trouble
• Get tons of traffic on a tight budget?
• Prosperity Through Attraction Marketing
• My Facebook