Oprah's Midas Touch

Now that Twitter has received Oprah's Midas touch, the real question will be to see how many of these new users will stick around. While Oprah devoted a large segment of her show on Friday to Twitter, she did not really explain the service in any great detail.

We will have to see if the majority of new users will actually use the service as intended, or if they will just stick to following celebrities like Oprah, Britney Spears (who also now has more than 1 million followers), or Aston Kutcher, whose race with CNN for reaching more than 1 million followers surely also helped to spark the sudden rush of new Twitter users (and we can't help but wonder whether the effort of a certain group of users to push a fake user account past Kutcher and CNN by creating hundreds of thousands of fake accounts isn't also reflected in these stats).

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.

The goal behind HeyCosmo Concierge is great: save you time. However, its practicality makes me wonder. The service implements advanced telephony technology to help you complete tasks. The easiest example of this would be making dinner reservations. Instead of you calling restaurants one-by-one in order to find an 8:00 PM seating for a party of five, you could use HeyCosmo Concierge to do the dialing for you. With an automated, but customizable, message, its robo-dialer immediately contacts all the restaurants in your area (and this can be narrowed down by cuisine, too) and asks the recipient of the call to press (1) for yes, we can accommodate you, (2) no, we cannot accommodate you, etc. in response to the initial recorded greeting and question. The particular questions and how they are phrased can be specified by you. You can also record your own voice if desired. At the end of the messages, an ad will play, which is how the service makes money.

After placing the call, you'll see results return immediately, in real-time, and next to each listing you'll see the status of the call and then how the person on the other end responded (1, 2, 3, etc.) or if there was no answer.

HeyCosmo Concierge

The technology behind this is pretty impressive, but my concern is for the people on the other end of the call. Would they think this recording is spam? Would they realize it's just a recording and hang up? Did I just save my time at the expense of theirs? Based on the number of restaurants dialed with no response, I think it's entirely possible that the answer in many cases would be "yes."

The reason? Phone trees. After years of navigating the annoying phone trees in an effort to reach an actual human being when dialing up customer service, there's a profound distaste for automated greetings and messages that's still very prevalent in our culture. And unfortunately, without willing participants on the other end of the line, HeyCosmo Concierge won't be effective.

HeyCosmo Blaster

However, the other app by this company, HeyCosmo Blaster, might have some potential...at least among the mobile-savvy kids, teens, and young adults of Gens X, Y, and Z. Blaster is a simple social planning app. To use, you just enter in a date, time, and place to meet along with the names and numbers of your friends.

Blaster, like Concierge, immediately dials your friends and presents the menu choices you specified. (i.e. "Press (1) from Meet at 1:30 PM at the mall," "Press (2) to meet at Katy's house at 2:00 PM," etc.). Organizers can then see the results in real-time and pick the most popular choice.

HeyCosmo Blaster

Although the technology is essentially the same as that of Concierge, the difference here is that you can have a personal conversation with your friends, family, or other group of message recipients beforehand: "Hey guys, since there's so many of us, I'm going to use this new mobile tool from now on to organize our __________ (Fill in the blank: meetings, study groups, classes, meetups, parties, etc.) Your phone number will also show on their CallerID, so they will know it's you. Since your friends will be expecting the call, the responses are bound to be a notch above those that come from Concierge, which is essentially a recorded message beamed to perfect strangers around your city.

As for who this service appeals to, my vote goes with the younger crowd. Obviously, anyone could use it, but with this group, mobile devices are glued to their hands, so here it has a better chance of success.

Learn More

You can visit HeyCosmo's web site and check out all their services here: www.heycosmo.com. Concierge and Blaster are both also available as Blackberry apps; an iPhone app will arrive in a few weeks.

Note: HeyCosmo also has another service, HeyCosmo Prankster, which was not demoed today. As a 10-year-old, I would have loved it. As an adult, I have to say that it's just plain wrong.

• Chrome has taken 1-2% share of the global browser market since its launch (NetApp)
• IE has lost 4-5% share so far in 2008 (NetApp)
• Analysts are skeptical of Chrome's adoption by enterprises, given its unproven "beta" status
• IE had 72% share and Firefox had 20% share in August 2008
• Microsoft and Mozilla recently launched browsers (IE 8 & Firefox 3) with similar features as Chrome

Click through to RWW Predictions to login and cast your prediction.

Note: On Monday afternoon the RWW Live crew will be discussing Chrome's impact on the browser market with 2-3 special guests. Be sure to tune in at 3:30 pm PDT Monday.

David Dworsky responded: "When will we stop talking about internet content as one thing and TV content as something totally different?" His full comment is below.

Congratulations Jason and David, you've each won a $30 Amazon voucher - courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Netflix Queue Widget.

"When will we stop talking about internet content as one thing and TV content as something totally different? People like to watch quality video - it doesn't matter if they use a Mac Book Pro or a Sony Bravia screen. The distribution channel is one thing and the content is another.

To have a rating system that's only based on TV viewers is plain stupid. Some people like to watch on their computer, some like to sit in the TV sofa, some like to use the ipod, some use Youtube - it's the choice of the individual.

To separate the content as TV- versus Internet-video is just an old habit from a business that haven't been fast enough to embrace new technology. It's like saying that the text in a newspaper is more worth than the same text on the newspaper website. Internet fandom is primetime (or at least it should be)."

Oprah image via The Last Podcast