No surprise here: Oprah appearance huge for Twitter

Twitter's growth. Note the huge jump at the end--that's the Oprah effect.

(Credit: Hitwise)

Twitter's much-publicized appearance on Oprah Winfrey's talk show last week did a real number for the microblogging tool's traffic, a report from Hitwise indicates.

On April 17, the day of the show--when CEO Evan Williams appeared on-air and Winfrey herself began Twittering--a whopping 37 percent of visits to the Twitter.com home page were new visitors. That's a high number even for the fast-growing Twitter. Keep in mind that many avid Twitter users rarely even visit the home page, instead relying on desktop- or mobile-based third-party applications, so the jump might not look quite as drastic if you factor all those in. But it's still high: Hitwise says that in comparison, recent counts of new Facebook visitors as a percentage of overall traffic are more like 5 percent.

There's nothing particularly surprising about this, as the "Oprah effect" has been known to propel books to the top of Amazon's bestseller list almost instantly. It's more surprising that Twitter's servers, once notoriously volatile, stayed on top of things for the most part.

But what's really going to be interesting is to see how many of these curious new visitors come back regularly.

[Rants&Raves]

A lot of their new server code is builta round Scala; that's a language really worth looking into.

[Powerpeacemaster]

Hey Oprah made a splash but she is far from a regular and has posted no messaging capacity. I am surprised she was not able to hook up a direct link from Twitter to her web site. Twitter better get on it and increase the server capacity.
Say anybody want to help me in www.ning.com under Native Spirits with my group Horses Helping Humans. These wonderful people at Pocono Equestrian rescue horses and train them to assist with special needs children. [e-mail]

[spectator1]

I am curious to see if the Midas touches will help an affiliate of Walmart, Itune, Microsoft generate revenue by being associated the Oprah Twitter craze. Everyone would like to be notice and be known for being successful. Without all the details of our lives just check us out on Twitter D L SERVICES INC.

[kgsbca]

"But what's really going to be interesting is to see how many of these curious new visitors come back regularly."

No, what's really going to be interesting is to see how twitter plans to make any money.

twitter has realized there is no viable business model, so they have embarked on a great PR campaign to expand their visibility, in the hopes that some schmuck of an exec gets the genius idea of buying them. create a buzz, start rumors that google might buy them, leak hints about new stuff coming out, and get celebrities to pimp their product. but they don't charge for anything, and since they depend on short text messages that don't leave much room for advertisements, it's hard to see how they will pay for servers, bandwidth, and texting charges.

[ca5ter]

I Twitter on the $h#tter

[eltoro2827]

twitter is for celebs...im not one..dont plan to be one...and can care less about them

[gggg sssss]

sheep

[spectator1]

Lets see if Oprah can boost D L SERVICES INC into the stars. Follow us on Twitter or click
http://dlservicesincservices.com