While Twitter's sudden mainstream appeal might be somewhat disconcerting for early adopters who would prefer it if Twitter wasn't suddenly the cool new thing to try out for soccer moms, it will surely bring a lot of new opportunities (and challenges) for Twitter.

I Can Talk to Oprah Now!

Unless you are a public figure or a publisher, however, having a large number of followers may not even be the best way to create a positive experience on Twitter, though the current hype around Kutcher and CNN racing to the 1 million follower mark will surely drive the perception that follower numbers are what Twitter is all about. Also, while the current perception in the tech blogosphere is that Twitter is all about self-promotion, for those mainstream users who are joining Twitter now, that will simply not be the case, and we will have to wait and see how many of Kutcher's and Oprah's new followers will use Twitter for anything else but to follow their favorite celebrities. It will also be interesting to see if Oprah decides to continue using Twitter in following weeks and if she will actually use it for two-way communication with her fans (beyond the all-caps message that heralded her arrival on Twitter today).

Can the Mainstream Handle Twitter?

On its own site, Twitter will also have to explain its utility better if it wants to draw in all the potential mainstream users who will hear about Twitter for the first time today. Twitter, after all, still asks you what you are doing, even though that is probably the least interesting way of using Twitter. It is also important to note that Twitter, being the small company that it is, barely has any tech support besides its Get Satisfaction page, so a befuddled new user doesn't have any place to go to ask questions about how to use it.

Can Twitter Handle the Mainstream?

This sudden mainstreaming of Twitter, however, doesn't mean that Twitter has finally jumped the shark. In the end, Twitter going mainstream will barely affect most current users. After all, once you manage to unfollow Ashton Kutcher again, most of us won't have to deal with Oprah, Kutcher, or any other celebrity on the service; though, who knows, you might soon be getting DM's from your mom...

The choice of the fake user's "real" name, username, avatar, and bio are typical examples of the kind of crass and often tasteless humor that runs rampant on anonymous forums like 4chan. The new Twitter account clearly refers to Joseph Fritzl, the Austrian who, unknown to the rest of his family, imprisoned his daughter in his house's basement for 24 years until his double life finally unraveled last year.

Not all of the humor on 4chan is this crass, however. The site, after all, was also the breeding ground for popular Internet memes like Rickrolling and lolcats.

While the members of 4chan's 'random' board (often referred to as /b/) first tried to manipulate twitter with automated scripts that set up fake accounts, they weren't able to hack Twitter's captcha process, which is probably the reason why even the enterprising 4chan pranksters haven't been able to reach more than 200,000 followers for their fake account yet. Knowing 4chan, however, we don't expect them to give up anytime soon, and we wouldn't be surprised if they managed to break Twitter's captcha at some point as well.

If you would like to see how exactly this hack works, here are the instructions that one of 4chan's members created for the rest of the /b/ community.

Oprah Might Just Win this Race

However, given that Oprah is going to talk about Twitter on her show tomorrow, there is still a good chance that she will pass by Kutcher, CNN, and 4chan's BasementDad in no time.

Moot

The members of 4chan's /b/ board also made the news a bit earlier this week, when they manipulated a Time.com poll so that it featured the name of 4chan founder 'moot' as the most influential person in the world.

Where is Twitter?

Interestingly, Twitter, which should be aware of the sudden rash of fake accounts that all subscribe to only one user, hasn't closed this account yet.

Update: We just head from Twitter's Biz Stone. Twitter is aware of this situation and "and will react accordingly."

Note: we did not include a link to 4chan in this post, as a lot of the material there is NSFW (or worse). If you insist on going there, a quick Google search for 4chan will do the trick.