Oprah's on Twitter! - Live Updates

On Friday, April 17, 2009 Oprah made her debut on Twitter. Who is Oprah following and what is she tweeting about? Since I'm fairly active on Twitter, I decided to take a look. Will Oprah follow me? Maybe not, but I'm following her updates.

So who is on Oprah's follow list? So far, Oprah is following Gayle King (are you surprised), Sheri Salata, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, The Real Shaq, George Stephanopoulos, Ellen Degeneres, Jimmy Fallon, and Evan Williams.

Will she follow anyone else throughout the day today? We shall see. Keep an eye on this article, as it will be updated today with Oprah's tweets, followers, who else she may follow, etc.

UPDATES:

9:00 pm EST - Alright folks, this is my last live update on the Oprah Twitter experience. Oprah's list of followers has now exceeded 200,000 and is probably still growing. Twitters are still sending Oprah tweets. It can be quite fun to read some of the tweets sent out. Oprah never did end up following me or AC News, but there's still time. LOL I hope everyone enjoyed my updates. Have a great weekend!

7:34 pm EST - Oprah now has over 188,000 followers. A recent tweet from BeatSupreme says "I figured @BarackOBama wouldve been on @oprah's list of friends...she endorsed the heck outta him!" I have to admit that I also was thinking Oprah would follow Barack.

6:38 pm EST - Oprah just tweeted Larry King (@kingsthings). Her tweet to him said that she wanted to tweet him on the show tonight, but isn't sure about "airtweets" because apparently, she'll be in flight. She also tweeted that Larry "Have fun with Ashton!" Number of Oprah followers on Twitter: almost 177,000.

6:30 pm EST - Action! We have action! LOL Oprah just posted a couple tweets a few minutes ago. She thanked Shaq for being her Twitter buddy and also told him "this is cool." She also told Evan Williams that it was good to have him on the show and that she was toasting him with a margarita in her office. By the way, the number of people following Oprah on Twitter has risen to almost 174,000.

6:00 pm EST - Oprah now has almost 167,000 followers on Twitter. How long will it take her to get to a million? AC Source Nina Rotz predicts 14 million in a few months. What do you think?

5:21 PM EST - Watching the Oprah show here in Houston. Dreaming with blogging4bucks who tweeted "If only I could get someone like @aplusk or @oprah to ask their followers to follow me :p An instant twitter star! *sighs* One can dream!" Oprah's follower count is almost at 159,000. I'm guessing it will be at 160,000 when this posts.

4:53 pm EST - Singer TemujinScott just tweeted at Oprah to be his agent. I checked out his MySpace page. He's got a couple videos up and he's actually pretty good. I wonder if a feature on Oprah's show is in his future.

4:38 pm EST - Looks like Oprah isn't as much of a Twitter addict as Ashton Kutcher because she still hasn't tweeted since earlier. Even though I tweeted about Oprah today, I don't appear to have lost any followers, due to the #unfollowfriday movement. Either my followers aren't participating in that or they haven't yet noticed. The number of people following Oprah is nearing 150,000. It will probably be there or past it by the time I post this update.

3:51 pm EST - Well, Oprah still hasn't made another tweet yet, but even so, the number of people following Oprah has grown to over 135,000. Not sure yet why twitters are posting this particular tweet "@oprah sup? welcome to twitter. - mikeyy" but I had to wade through a ton of them from different users to find another interesting tweet to Oprah. LoriGregory tweets to Oprah "just because @oprah is on twitter now, does that mean Nate is going to come in and re-decorate the place?"

3:03 pm EST - My tweet for Oprah: "#followfriday @Oprah because how could I not include her today? and @acnews because they should be on Oprah. ;-)" AC News tweeted back that they should, so what do you say, Oprah? By the way, Oprah's follower count is now almost 130,000. Pretty impressive for just one day on Twitter - and the day is not near over yet.

2:38 pm EST - Over 126,000 people following Oprah. Twitter user gwyns remarks to Oprah in a tweet "interested to see if twitter changes with the influx of your influence..." I'm interested in that as well, gwyns. AC Source Colleen Starr commented below about those not wanting Oprah to use Twitter. I have to agree with her that Twitter is a place for everyone. A Twitter user can choose who to follow (or not follow). Speaking of choosing people to follow, I wonder if Oprah will ever follow @ACNews on Twitter or even me (@momietullottes)? OK, so it's more likely she'd choose AC News over me, but you never know.

2:11 pm EST - Interestingly, after that huge jump to 237,000 plus followers, Oprah's Twitter followers then dropped back down to over 121,000. Was that other number a Twitter glitch? Did that many people suddenly follow and then unfollow Oprah? Still no more tweets from Oprah yet.

1:55 pm EST - Wow! A huge jump in people following Oprah! The total number of people following Oprah is now at over 237,000! Go Oprah! Must be nice. Another tweet to Oprah comes from NatyOliveira. She tweets to Oprah "OMG! OMG! OMG! I just wanna give you a big hug! Come to Brazil and I will introduce you to a lot of handsome middle age mens :)" I don't think Oprah had intentions of using Twitter as a dating service...

1:35 pm EST - Oprah now has over 116,000 followers. Ashton Kutcher, look out for Oprah! LOL Ashton so far has the highest number of followers on Twitter, even more than CNN, but I'm predicting that Oprah is going to top that in a very short amount of time. I wonder how many people use Twitter anyway. MyLPU tweets about Oprah "I guess twitter will soon be called #Owitter pretty soon looks like @oprah is taking over :) #oprah"

1:12 pm EST - Some recent tweets to Oprah include one from Twitter user CarolAnnB, who says "Is it really you, or is this your PR person?" Well, we know that the Twitter action done on the Oprah show was her. Apparently even dogs can have a Twitter because blueribbonday (a dog with a Twitter) tweeted "I'll follow you. I wag my tail for just about anyone. Can I play w/ your puppy?"

12:58 pm EST - Thanks to a comment from AC Source jcorn, I did a search for #unfollowfriday on Twitter and it seems there are a good number of people recommending both Oprah, Ashton Kutcher (aplusk), and their followers as people to unfollow.

12:49 pm EST - No more tweets from Oprah yet, but she's got an interesting group of followers on Twitter (at over 108,000 now). Even more interesting are the tweets people are sending her. Twitter user zekers included Oprah in his #followfriday list "cuz she loves dogs!" User cjzumba kept it more simple with "WELCOME to Twitter!"

12:21 pm EST - Oprah's Twitter followers are growing pretty rapidly (over 104,000 now). Is she going to break Ashton's record million plus followers?

12:00 pm EST - Oprah's got over 100, 000 followers and growing. Each time I hit refresh, there's hundreds more. Her first tweet was a couple hours ago, thanking everyone for a warm welcome and saying that she was "feeling really 21^st century." She also tweeted about Jimmy ordering a Reuben for her, Sadie's rabies vaccine, "little Jordan," and she even told George "that's a promo, not a tweet." Her last tweet was an hour ago to Mrs Kutcher about her donation of nets.

SOURCES

http://twitter.com/oprah
http://www.oprah.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/16/AR2009041603078.html
http://twitter.com/aplusk