Can 1.2 million new members damage Twitter?

Last week's Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN's race to the Twitter million ruffled an awful lot of feathers in the Twitter community.

The race culminated in his appearance on Oprah, where she joined Twitter and tweeted for the first time live on air, causing an influx of around 1.2 million new members (the so-called 'Oprah effect').

I have nothing against celebrities on Twitter. I don't follow all that many, but that's because outside of the Twitterverse I'm not that interested in celebrities either.

I can even see what Ashton was trying to do with this experiment. Reading his victory speech, as he beat CNN to one million followers, he does seem to have an understanding of the benefits of social media, how it gives the ordinary person a powerful platform to voice their opinions and how it's evolving the traditional media.

In many ways I think it's great that so many new people joined the Twitter community as a result.
I'm not a not a twitter snob. If someone joins for the simple reason that they want to know what their favourite celebrity is up to every day and maybe even send them a message, then fine. Different strokes for different folks.

But what does bother me is the way those 1.2 million new people have been initiated into Twitter.
I'd hope that after joining they'd find out more about Twitter, find other non-celebs with shared interests and get involved.

But considering the impression that could be drawn from the 'follow me to help me win' mentality, will their main goal instead be to collect as many followers, in the shortest amount of time possible? Will Twitter, for them, be an online popularity contest?

Will they even remember the invitation extended to them on The Twitter registration screen - 'Join the conversation'?

If they don't then that's a real problem, and it bothers me.

It's a great shame that these new members aren't going to be getting the best from their Twitter accounts - for themselves and for us. After all, the more people on Twitter the louder our voices and the richer the pool of interests and expertise.

The recent burst of celebrity 'contests' on Twitter could also be a green-light for other celebrities, brands and their PR teams to manufacture similar stunts to 'collect' followers and then use Twitter in the same way they use traditional media; To push out information about themselves to a faceless list of names without entering into conversation or interaction with their followers.

This would be a step backwards, the few speaking to the many. As followers we'll be downgraded to just a receiver of information rather than a participant in a conversation, which has always been the beauty of Twitter.

I don't believe that now Twitter is firmly in the mainstream, it is the beginning of the end.

In fact I think we may start seeing just how powerful Twitter really is. Let's see how people react if celebrities, companies and brands try to force traditional communication methods onto their followers.

After all, these new followers came to connect with these celebrities, but it's up to Oprah, Ashton and Britney (to name a few) to give them a reason to stay.

If they start churning out marketing blurb, advertising and shameless self-promotion to their 'collection' of followers then those followers should scream 'Give me something of value or I'll unfollow’.

What celebs, brands and their PR people need to remember is unlike traditional media and conventional communication methods, on Twitter you only have to listen to what you want to.

Switching off is just one click of the 'unfollow' button away.

On that note, I'll leave it for now. But let’s see how this unfolds, and let’s see who still has 1 million followers in a few months time!