Thanks to Oprah, we can finally stop talking about Twitter

April 17, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

Today may very well be the end of an era. Actor Ashton Kutcher, the first man to reach 1 million Twitter followers, and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams are going on The Oprah Winfrey show today to talk about the microblogging service, and it looks like Winfrey has started tweeting (she’s already approaching 120,000 followers).

I’ve been keeping my head down during most of the furor around Kutcher’s successful attempt to beat CNN breaking news to 1 million followers. I’m not above celebrity news or anything, I just prefer my celebrities to be more obviously talented, entertainingly messed up, or both. But now that the whole boring story is approaching its climax, I’ve realized that it may be more significant than I first thought — just as being featured on the cover of Time Magazine means that a fad has probably peaked, I think an appearance on Oprah means an emerging tech trend is officially over. Not that Twitter won’t continue growing (obviously, Oprah will bring hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more members to the site, just as she drove tons of sales for Amazon’s Kindle), but at this point it’s officially impossible for anyone, especially a tech blog, to pretend there’s anything shiny and new about Twitter.

In other words, we’ll still cover the company as a business and as a powerful tool, but hopefully we’ll see a sharp reduction in “Wow! Twitter!” stories. These are the stories that treat the service as an exciting novelty that you still need to explain to people, the kind of story that TechCrunch mocked hilariously in a one-word post last year. The next time you see a post breathlessly exclaiming, “Politicians are on Twitter! Celebrities are on Twitter! You can find news on Twitter!” or whatever, please leave the following comment: “Dude, Twitter was on Oprah. ‘Nuff said.” And yes, that includes posts on VentureBeat.

At least Kutcher isn’t getting too big-headed about his accomplishment. In response to a tweet declaring him the “King of Twitter,” he said, “There are no kings on Twitter, only jesters.” Yes, exactly.

You can find me on Twitter here along with fellow VentureBeatniks Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Camille Ricketts, Terrence Russell, Dan Kaplan and Matt Marshall. We have a VentureBeat account (for our posts) as well.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • I joined twitter, but I find it to be more of a time waster than a good marketing strategy. Maybe if I was already as famous as Oprah or Ashton.

    One day...
  • Impressed by the number of people who are on the Twitter network it is expected to grow and serve as a source and commercial advertising, there is no doubt that this will be ...
    http://www.naturals-products.com
  • Oprah hah! probabaly had somebody doing the twitting for her.
  • I just wrote a piece on this myself called "the day twitter died" basically the jist is that once my mom is on a social network I move on. This is the cool thing about the internet and also why there will always be new tech companies. The reason is simple, people like me like to know about things that other people don't. Once they hit mainstream we don't care and move on. Then main stream follows and the circle continues.

    If I my plug my website go to fatjewishguy.com and read the whole article. But yes, today Twitter managed to die a quick and painlesss death.
  • Brian
    At what point is someone going to acknowledge that Twitter has some type of deal with Ashton Kutcher (along with Diddy, Ryan Seascrest, Jimmy Fallon and Oprah)? This isn’t about malaria – this is about money. I watched Larry King last night – it was a 30 minute Twitter infomercial . When Twitter eventually sells, I would be shocked if we don’t find out that Kutcher and the gang had some type of profit share deal. This is not news -- This is a marketing campaign.
  • connie
    Malaria is a serious killer responsible for millions of deaths on the african continent. Mosquito nets are a new manufactured business imposed on poor africans as another band aid solution to their suffering. Unfortunately nets cannot be worn. They cover beds at night and this is an important solution and a blessing to a good night's sleep. However, Africa needs a solution that goes to the root of the probem. I would rather see the likes of Angelina Jolie adopting villages or orphanages and following their money and monitoring progress instead of raising money or mosquito nets and never followng through to their delivery or usage. Come on fellow Americans, roll up your sleeves and adopt villages and get out of your comfort zones. This is by no means to say that your intentions are not nobles--they are well meaning but naive.
  • Now Twitter is no longer cool.
    What's next?

    Work and doing business?