By Julie Bort, Network World |

Twitter jumps the shark

When Google decided to Twitter in February, it seemed like a long overdue inevitability. But now, Twitter's announcing that media maven Oprah is finally joining the Twittering set, and that she'll be using Ashton Kutcher as her guide. And today the feeling is more one of publicity overload. Looks like Twitter may have officially entered the final seconds of its 15 minutes of fame.

It's not so much the fact that Oprah plans to Twitter; that does make sense, especially for a tech savvy entrepreneur like Oprah, who had the foresight to list Amazon's Kindle as one of her favorite things. But the problem is more the Ashton Kutcher link.

Why has Kutcher suddenly become the poster boy for All Things Twitter? Perhaps Twitter is worried about its most recent demographic statistics, which show that the majority of its users are 35 years of age and older, with a full 10% between 55 and 64. Maybe they think he can make that trend a little younger?

And while he obviously knows how to market (Nikon's CoolPix saw a 30% uptick in sales after his TV commercials began airing incessantly), and he just very publicly beat CNN to become the first Twitterer to reach the 1 million follower mark on the microblogging platform, the fact that he's associated himself with Twitter almost screams "fad".

And now he's supposedly imbuing Oprah with all his dubious Twitter wisdom as she tries Twittering for the first time today. (Good luck with that. Among her first notable tweets: "hi jimmy order a reuben for me." The excitement is palpable.)

It's all a little much. And a lot like the hoola-hoop.

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