'The Fry Effect' - mentioning Twitter on the Jonathan Ross show

 by Martin Belam, 25 January 2009

I assumed that on Friday night nothing short of appearing in sackcloth and ashes and spending the whole 59 minute slot groveling and apologising profusely could have placated the tabloids.

Jonathan Ross coverage in the Mail Online

I was rather more interested in the Jonathan Ross impact on Twitter.

"All over. Won't reveal too much as press seem anxious to be all over this. JR & I discussed Twitter. Hope it makes the cut. Cruise charming" - @stephenfry
Stephen Fry on Twitter

Followers of @stephenfry and @wossy knew in advance that they might discuss the micro-blogging service that seems just on the cusp of exploding into the mainstream. Just after filming had finished on Thursday afternoon, Fry had 54,770 followers in his one man experiment to break Twitter, and @wossy had 13,933.

By Sunday morning, after the show had been broadcast twice on BBC One, @stephenfry had 63,571 followers - an increase of something like 16% in four days.

Ross, on the other hand, didn't appear to experience any kind of upswing in followers at all.

Jonathan Ross Mac advert

Still, my local Sainsburys looks like it is hoping his return to TV might stimulate sales of his book...

Discount Ross book

7 Comments

I wonder if that's because Stephen Fry has chosen a good, obvious Twitter name whilst Ross' @wossy is a little obscure and harder to find?

@jonathanross was taken - he is a "Quality Assurance professional plying his trade in Israel" and started tweeting in October 2007

@wossy's follower count not going up is due to a bug, apparently

There's apparently a Twitter bug that's freezing the number of followers for large Twitter accounts.

Yes, that doesn't surprise me, I thought it was odd that the number was exactly the same - hence my weasel words "didn't appear"

Hmm. I wonder what the cringeworthy discussion of Twitter on BBC Two's "Something for the Weekend" did to Tim Lovejoy's following...

Probably not very much.

One of the people I follow was tracking the rise of Lovejoy on Twitter

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