Last Friday when Oprah tweeted that she was joining the 21st century some Twitter folk lamented the gentrification of twitter. If Oprah tweets then her legion of middle American fans will tweet and suddenly I don’t look so cool or edgy anymore. Bugger!
The truth is that twitter was already mainstream – Ashton Kutcher and Brittney are not quirky underground artists, they are celebrities through and through.
The concern appeared to be that with Twitter becoming more mainstream it would be harder to become a twitter star. You would actually have to do something in order to be famous for more than 15 tweets.
That’s right there is a real tangible world outside the twittersphere.
In this real world people do stuff, they are experts because they really know a lot about a particular topic like open heart surgery. In this world people engage in business transactions that hopefully make each of them money.
Twitter is simply the brand new thing, and soon it will be yesterdays news. When it is the Warholian twitter experts suspicious and envious of Oprah will need to find another way to be famous.