Tonight I was witness to the first mention of Twitter on prime time entertainment television here in the UK. “Twitter” said with remarkable familiarity by none other than UK televisions most popular talk show host Jonathan Ross.
The show featured the likes of comedian Lee Evans and actor Tom Cruise but it was Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry – both now avid users of the service – who announced the service to over 4 million TV viewers from across the UK.
I must admit, even though both Ross and Fry had commented on the fact that Twitter was going to be mentioned – part of me refused to believe it would make the cut…it definitely did. Ross even went as far as to ask both Cruise and Evans if they used the service – but the topic was changed before either were able to respond (of course, they don’t).
Now, the questions is – are we to expect a flood of new British users? Is a mention on prime time UK television going to be enough to bring in the UK masses? I’m going to try and contact Twitter to see if they can give me an idea as to how much interested the mention brought.
This isn’t the first time it has been mentioned on the BBC. With the “Hudson plane” incident it was commented on the BBC News how twitter spread the word before the press could even get there.
Really does show that Twitter is making great leaps forward and is great free promotion that any website would wish for.
Wellm, I can see from twittercounter that Stephen Fry added 1000 followers since yesterday – but stats for Jonathan Ross say he’s added 0. I think there are currently a few issues regarding follower numbers with Twittter, but it certainly seems to be a kind of tipping point for awareness in the UK.
I’m off to add some content to my ‘How to Tweet Friends and Influence People’ ebook/microblog/lifestream/twlog ;-)
I just hope that we don’t get floods of tweets from the hype machines that surround many of the current pop idol culture vultures! What I mean by that is seudo personal tweets much like the ‘autobiographies’ of wannabe stars written by ghost writers!
Hi Mark, yeah no i realise it had been mentioned in various news channels/programs but not on prime time entertainment television