Thanks for the Web Site!

Oprah signed up for Twitter and made her first post today (in all caps, natch). She’s devoting her entire show this afternoon to the microblogging service.

Oprah’s tweeting will no doubt inspire a ton of her legions to sign up for for accounts. There’s been a lot of talk today about how that will affect the rest of us that use the service (most obviously, the increase in traffic will lead to an increase in Fail Whales).

A common sentiment is that once Oprah touches something, be it your favorite classic novel or social tool, said thing is no longer cool. I get that. When I was buying a copy of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, I refused to buy the less-expensive copy with the Oprah’s Book Club! sticker on it.

How many people are actually going to leave Twitter because Oprah has joined? I don’t think it’ll be very many. Did you leave Facebook when your mom signed up for it? (Maybe I should wonder how many people changed their privacy settings when their parents friended them. How many people’s dad’s are still in friend purgatory?)

My tweeting won’t change, because I’m not in Oprah’s target demographic. I’m not planning to follow her, and I don’t think many of her followers will try to follow me.

Looks like she could benefit from a quick lesson in polite Twitter use - she has 162,789 followers and only follows 9 people. So far, her only @reply is to Demi Moore.

Honestly, I wonder how long her tweeting will last.