Oprah Bursts Through The 1 Million Followers Barrier

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That didn’t take long. Oprah now has 1,011,210 followers (which has probably changed when you read this). Remember Ashton Kutcher’s race with CNN to 1 million? Well, he should be glad that Oprah didn’t participate. 42 updates (the last one from May 10th) since shouting out her arrival on April 17th. Now would she please do something good with this, OK?

Twitter Isn’t Sticky Enough

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Nielsen Wire has a post up on how Twitter is failing to get new users to come back.

Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.

In other words, Twitter isn’t sticky enough.

This is a real problem, and while many Twitter lovers might have seen Oprah entering the stage as something of a saviour, I hate to break it to you: She looks bored already. Last tweet was posted on Friday last week. That’s not the way to use Twitter. Still, the Oprah effect has given Twitter a huge boost, so they can certainly afford to attract less than 40% of the newcomers, right? More on Techmeme.

Hitwise Graphs The Oprah Effect On Twitter

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We knew it would mean a surge of new visitors and users on Twitter when Oprah joined up. After all, the Oprah effect (originally coined for the power of her book club) is something of a phenomenon in itself, and a few days ago, Twitter got its share. So what’s the verdict? Hitwise knows:

Share of US Internet visits to Twitter increased 24% on Friday, April 17, the day of Oprah’s first Tweet. Comparing visits with the previous Friday, visits were up 43%.

More on Techmeme if you will.

Top Tech Brands Don’t Get Twitter

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The Royal Pingdom blog continues to do and publish interesting studies. The latest one is about how many of the top IT companies that are represented on Twitter, or even in control of their brand, and the result is a depressing one indeed:

Alas, our Pingdom poll of 100 Fortune 500 IT-companies (full table below) showed that 67 of them can be hard to find with a name search, as they don’t use Twitter accounts which have the same names as their company name.

That’s 67%, a staggering number, that just don’t get Twitter. Perhaps a bit harsh, but true nevertheless. Maybe they are more inclined to get their Twitter account under control now that even Oprah’s doing it?

Oprah To Start Twittering Today

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Big time Oprah fan MG Siegler on TechCrunch noticed that Oprah will start twittering today (being Friday). He puts it together with Evan Williams’ tweet yesterday and the fact that Ashton “1 Million Followers” Kutcher is her guest. She’ll most likely send her first tweet on the air, and then the failwhale will haunt us for some time, probably. After all, Oprah tends to have some people watching, so expect a huge signup rate the coming days.