tweetfeel/biz Spots the Oprah Love

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

In a story that had nothing to do with weightloss or people jumping on couches, the Oprah Winfrey show was in the news yet again on November 19th and 20th 2009. The announcement that Oprah had decided to end the Oprah Winfrey show after 25 years was a shocker for some people.  This stunning announcement is quite clear in a very simple chart of the volume of Oprah tweets. In the days before the announcement, the volume of tweets fluctuated slightly. Then suddenly, on Nov 19 and 20, tweets mentioning Oprah showed a tremendous spike. You don’t need to have color vision to know which is the blue line in the chart below.  The spike, however, lasted only a couple of days after which time the volume of tweets returned to its standard trend.

However, overall sentiment did  not show any major change. Sentiment hovered around 75% positive for the Oprah Show before Nov 19. Then, it then decreased very slightly to around 68% positive at the time of the announcement. Within just a few days though, sentiment had increased once more to about78% positive. Why is this happening?

What types of emotions were people exhibiting in their tweets? As shown in the pie chart below, nearly half of the emotions expressed by tweeple were those of love.  Even though fans might have been upset at the announcement, they were still very fond of Oprah and her show. The next most popular emotions were equally split between expressions of anger and sadness, each reflecting 19% of the pie, but not in sufficient volumes to cause a significant shift in the overall positivity of emotion. Surprise and courage were next in line, finishing off the last 8% and 6% of the pie.

These sample tweets show exactly why sentiment stayed high. Fans had no difficulty expressing both their love for Oprah and their sadness about the show.

• @Oprah SAD SAD SAD BUT,IF YOU LOVE SOMEONE LET THEM GO.I WOULD LOVE TO SEE ELLEN GO ON AT 4:00PM.WE WILL STILL SEE YOU LOVE SUE
• @Oprah I love your program,I loved having you on Twitter
• The Oprah Winfrey Show to end in 2011 after 25 years on air! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8370789.stm sad times…
• awww! Oprah is crying! I love her!

So, where do we think viewers will turn? One of the sample tweets should have given you a clue. If you look at the chatter, Ellen Degeneres seems to be unstoppable with 73% of the chatter among Oprah fans. Tyra Banks is next in line with 15% of the chatter, followed by Rachael Ray with 12% of the chatter. It would take a miracle for Tyra or Rachael to jump over Ellen, but who knows, maybe Oprah will still be number one… except on her OWN network.