Friday afternoon, around 3pm (CST), a simple 130 character message was sent out to the Twitter world. This simple tweet, one of millions sent out that hour, set in motion a series of events that would forever change a young girl’s life and made for a very entertaining weekend. The message (shown below) was sent out by none-other than Conan O’Brien, who recently began his own Twitter account (@ConanOBrien) and amassed over 500,000 followers in record time.
Conan's Tweet About His New Friend Sarah
What makes this tweet so unique is that it was Conan’s first follow. Until that point, Conan had only posted a handful of tweets, and had established a giant audience (580,000 followers) that was anxiously waiting to see what he would do next. What many of us did not realize is Conan had not followed a single person to that point. It is as if Conan had announced a new show, built a beautiful new set, filled the seats with thousands of fans and only done his opening monologue. It took several weeks for him to announce his first guest on this new stage…. LovelyButton.
I myself had been following Conan for several weeks when the tweet went out. I saw the message come across my screen (via TweetDeck) and thought “what is so special about him following this one person?” That’s when I took a look at his Twitter profile and realized what was going on. I quickly clicked on the single icon in his Following area and landed on the profile page of LovelyButton. The buzz had already started. She already had 550 followers and, to that point, didn’t even realize what was going on. She had no posts acknowledging the fact that a SuperStar was following her and had no idea what was going to happen next.
Throughout the weekend, I followed this story via Twitter, Google, DIGG and any other news source I could find. I watched as her list of followers grew from 3 (as she later posted) to almost 13,000 in 24 hours. I watched as she posted her first response to the follow and realized that she would have her 15 minutes of fame. I watched as hordes of people tried to find ways to capitalize on her moment in the spotlight. I am still watching to see what happens next.
What makes this story truly amazing, other than the fact that a simple message from a Super Star has the power to make an unknown famous, is what happened behind the scenes for young Sarah. She was interviewed dozens of times over the weekend and we learned that Sarah (19 years old) was set to get married in September. She and her fiance (who had recently been laid off) were unsure of how they would pay for the wedding. After that famous tweet, they got their answer. Total strangers stepped forward and began showering Sarah with gifts. Here is the haul so far (as taken from this Los Angeles Times article) :
- A brand new Apple computer and web cam
- Invitations for the wedding
- A photographer
- A videographer
- Wedding bands
- A custom-made wedding dress
Conan probably had no idea how big this would become and I don’t think we have heard the last from LovelyButton. She has an audience of her own already and will no-doubt be on a talk show or two in the near future.
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Tags: Conan O'Brien, ConanObrien, LovelyButton, tweet, Twitter
