Oprah effect: 43% jump in Twitter traffic

Oprah Winfrey’s effect on book sales when she supports a new title is legendary. She may have even contributed to the election of the nation’s first black president with her endorsement of Barack Obama. So what happened in Twitterland after Winfrey started Tweeting, and used her TV show as a platform to announce her online Twitter presence?

According to market tracker Hitwise, traffic to Twitter went up 43% in a before and after survey of the Oprah Effect.

Additionally, on April 17th, the day of Winfrey’s first Tweets, 37% of visits to Twitter.com were new visitors, Hitwise says. By comparison, Hitwise says Facebook’s ratio of new visitors in March were 8%.

Hitwise also looked at top search terms for the week, and found that “Oprah,” was no. 7, and “Oprah Twitter,” no. 35.

Psst… Twitter Has Big News. And It’s Top Secret

Twitter’s traffic is shooting through the roof right now — a recent Comscore report finds the site’s U.S. usage more than doubled in March, jumping a full 131 percent from the previous month — and now, the service’s founders seem to have some sort of surprise up their sleeves. So what’s the big secret?

Twitter Talk

The news is alluded to in a couple of cryptic messages from Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Williams posted the following update on his Twitter profile Thursday morning:

“Tomorrow just became a very big day. (Sorry for the teaser–more later.)”

It followed a Wednesday night update from Stone, which may or may not be related:

“It’s almost midnight in Boston–did I really agree to get up before 6am? Tomorrow is going to be a long and interesting day!”

Stone had previously indicated his trip would involve “a few days of meetings.” Boston, it’s worth noting, is where Twitter investor Spark Capital is based. The company has already invested millions in Twitter, first in 2008 and then again just this past February. One of its partners, Bijan Sabet, writes on his personal blog that the firm’s “annual meeting with [its] limited partners” was scheduled for Thursday.

Read Full Article