Oprah Winfrey may already be the Queen of All Media, but lately she’s been gunning for another title: Queen of All Tech.
Thursday’s episode of the show (taped earlier this month) is entirely dedicated to Skype, eBay’s soon-to-be-spun-off Internet communications service.
Over the past few weeks we’ve seen countless stories about the “Oprah effect” on Twitter — TechCrunch suggested more than one million people signed up and many a blog linked to Hitwise data that suggested the talk-show doyenne’s endorsement of the service led to a 43 percent spike in Twitter traffic.
Ashton, Oprah, Britney, when will it end?
Now Twitter is taking on a distinctly political bent, with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom using the service to announce his bid for governor of California. On Tuesday, he wrote: “It’s official- running for Gov of CA. Wanted you to be the first to know. Need your help. Check out video: http://tr.im/iOCN and ReTweet.”
As Ashton Kutcher becomes the first to collect 1 million followers on Twitter and Oprah Winfrey sends out her first tweet, tech observers are debating: Does Friday mark a new peak for the microblogging service? Or the beginning of its demise?
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will take to Oprah Winfrey’s couch today. What to expect? Questions about the economy? Mark’s not-so-secret Twitter account? The latest redesign?
If you were planning to buy that special someone on your holiday shopping list an Amazon Kindle e-book reader, you better come up with something else.
Amazon notes on its Web site that “due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is sold out.” Amazon advises ordering now, though, “to reserve a place in line,” noting that orders will be filled on a first come, first served basis.
Despite the fact that its stock has exploded as much as 36 percent, Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney downgraded his rating of the company, noting widespread evidence of an overall consumer spending decrease. Mahaney loves the Kindle, and believes it’s at least partially responsible for the surge, but cautions that it won’t immediately affect Amazon’s financial results.
Amazon joins Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club? Apparently. In the middle of Amazon’s homepage today is a clip from “The Oprah Winfrey Show” during which she unveils her favorite gadget. Not hard to deduce that the Kindle will enter the exalted realm of “Oprah-Endorsed Entities,” inhaling the same air once exhaled by James Frey.
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