Oprah Winfrey, the icon that can turn any book or product into a best seller, posted her first Tweet on Friday on her show. There's been much debate among loyal Twitter users about whether this spells the end for Twitter's coolness, as soccer moms sign up in droves.
So what was the Oprah-Effect on Twitter? The following chart shows daily visits to Twitter from 1st January to 18th April (Oprah's first Tweet was on the 17th).
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%.
Hitwise clickstream data reveals that on April 17, 37% of visits to Twitter.com were new visitors (as opposed to returning). The service typically has a high ratio of new visitors as it is still very much in a growth phase. However, the percentage of new visitors was 5% higher on Friday than the previous day and the average for March. To give a benchmark, Facebook's ratio of new visitors was 8% in March.
The search term "oprah twitter" was the #35 highest search term with the word "twitter" last week and the #7 with "oprah". Considering that our search data is weekly and that the show only aired on Friday, this is impressive.
[via hitwise]
