6 ms·

Oprah ads 1 million+ users to Twitter.

11 points by coglethorpe 17y ago

pierrefar 17y ago
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.
- lpgauth 17y ago
  Oh TechCrunch....
jonknee 17y ago
I found out I'm #1766. Yikes! Oprah should put me on retainer, she could have been way ahead of the game.
rokhayakebe 17y ago
Is she using IE on her Apple laptop?
eli 17y ago
If that pattern is correct — and there isn’t much to suggest that it is, but bear with me... No thanks.
bbuffone 17y ago
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.
- wallflower 17y ago
  > 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_shark_or_a_whole_new_begining_for_twitter_114374.asp http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/social_nets/jumping_the...
redrobot5050 17y ago
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?"
rms 17y ago
Flagged for being stupid.
- pierrefar 17y ago
  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?

11 points by coglethorpe 17y ago

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.

lpgauth 17y ago
Oh TechCrunch....

jonknee 17y ago

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

rokhayakebe 17y ago

Is she using IE on her Apple laptop?

eli 17y ago

If that pattern is correct — and there isn’t much to suggest that it is, but bear with me... No thanks.

bbuffone 17y ago

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.

wallflower 17y ago
> 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_shark_or_a_whole_new_begining_for_twitter_114374.asp http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/social_nets/jumping_the...

redrobot5050 17y ago

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?"

rms 17y ago

Flagged for being stupid.

pierrefar 17y ago
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?