• April 20, 2009

Oprah Winfrey sent her first tweet on Twitter Friday morning. She typed out the message as the cameras of her talk show rolled. Winfrey wrote "HI TWITTERS," in all capital letters, the equivalent of someone shouting, as noted by some Twitter followers. "THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY." Accompanying Winfrey on the show were Twitter's CEO Evan Williams and actor Ashton Kutcher.

By the end of the first night, Winfrey had sent 10 tweets and attracted 242,196 followers. Her last tweet for the night read: "good nite tweets. first big day in twitterland. gotta get some shut eye and use the weekend for rebooting."

It's an example of how much social media such as Twitter has become woven into the fabric of daily life. ComScore Media Metrix U.S. data released April 25 for March shows that the number of visitors to Twitter.com jumped 131%, or 5 million, to 9.3 million visitors, sequentially.--Laurie Sullivan