Meet the Affluencers

In the book, there are many big celebrity names that are mentioned that had joined Twitter. One of the first big-name celebrities to join Twitter was former NBA star, Shaquille O’Neal. When he joined Twitter in November of 2008, Twitter was only 2 years old and was still only a little-known social media site to the rest of the world. According to Bilton (2013), this was good news because “where the celebrities went, their fans followed” (p. 170).

Although the book offers no statistical data to back up this claim, after some thorough investigation, there is data that can be found online in regards to Twitter’s growth over the years.

In the chart seen above, in November of 2008, there was a significant increase in the number of Twitter users in the United States. However more significantly, there was a tremendous spike in the number of Twitter users worldwide in December of 2008.

Another affluencer who seemed to have a significant impact on the popularity of Twitter was actor Ashton Kutcher. What set Ashton Kutcher apart from other celebrities as a user of Twitter at the time, was that he personally advocated for the company and would tell others how much he loved Twitter. Although there is again no statistical information presented in the book, there is another chart available online that measures the amounts of new Twitter users online.

 From January of 2009, which was when Kutcher first joined Twitter, to just before April 2009, there was a staggering increase in the rate of new Twitter users per month. In January there was about 1.2 million new sign-ups and in March there were about 8 million new sign-ups that month.

It is also because of Ashton Kutcher’s public use of Twitter that another affluencer decided to join the site, this time Oprah, one of the world’s most famous woman wanted in on the site. Before Oprah had even heard about Twitter, Ashton Kutcher and CNN were engaged in a very public race to see who could get one million followers first on Twitter. After Oprah had heard about this race, she started asking people about Twitter and was interested in getting her own account. The result was having Oprah dedicate a whole episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to Twitter and having her send her first “tweet” live on the air.

According to Bilton (2013), this first live tweet created a “tsunami of sign-ups” and “as the show went on, Oprah’s viewers started signing up for the site in droves…more people joined Twitter on that day than on any single day in the site’s history---nearly half a million people in the first twenty-four hours” (p. 188).

Again, although there is again no concrete evidence presented in the book, there is shown to be a significant growth in users from April to May of 2009 following a dramatic decrease in the amount of new users per month.