Fry off to a flying start on Twitter

Mass excitement around the Twittersphere yesterday as national treasure Stephen Fry joined Twitter. Within 2 hours, Stephen had over 2,500 followers - with more being added constantly - in what must have been a record number of followers in such a short space of time.

To see the full scale of commotion, take a look at the Twitter Search on Mr Fry.

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of this was the fact that he was following a lot of people back, meaning that there were numerous squeals of delight when people received the "Stephen Fry is now following you on Twitter" email. When I received mine, I did actually let out a girly squeak and have since printed off said email, framed it, and it now hangs over my desk...

The thing that most interested me about Stephen joining Twitter is that he instantly has a mass of people talking to him (or about him) meaning that he won't have time to 'dip his toes in the water' as it were and find his feet with the service. Unless he has help behind the scenes - as some have commented - then he's been thrown in feet first, will be overwhelmed by the noise and may not see the value in Twitter.

In fact, Stephen has already sensed this himself as a few tweets have shown:

Most people I've spoken to on this subject feel that they gain the most out of Twitter when used to follow a select group of contacts and see how their conversations develop - "a manageable group of people to follow" as Kate Bevan put it.

If Stephen doesn't continue using Twitter then it will be a massive shame as we're all no doubt looking forward to such 140 character gems as "Golly, crumbs, heckamighty and all the powerful legal swears and cusses Twitter will allow."

Then again, Stephen has said that he will tweeting his travels around the world, all of which will be on his soon-to-be-overhauled website, www.stephenfry.com. So even if all of his 2,926 followers (at the last count) won't be able to strike up a conversation on Twitter with him, we'll at least have our days brightened by his occassional tweets.