Kevin Rose seemed quite upset when Mr Fry overtook him (in a past Diggnation broadcast), well now Mr Fry has swept away and jumped several places ahead.

It shows his popularity when he’s only beaten by the President of the United States, it would be particularly amusing if Mr Fry took the leading position and therefore was more popular than the the President.

It also seems people are joining Twitter just to follow Mr Fry, that’s a good thing in that Twitter becomes more popular (and I’d guess the UK becomes a growing Twitter community).

There’s also a dangerous side (or potentially dangerous anyway) as the more followers Mr Fry has, the more power he wields, not just in the Twitterverse. Already when he mentions a site, it collapses under the load of several thousand (or tens of thousands of) people simultaneously trying to access the site. Maybe he should be employed by sites to test their scalability – a quick mention on Twitter and boom they’ve got users and lots of them.

Even Biz Stone (of Twitter) suggested that Stephen Fry should be Vice President of Twitter (but he could just as well be referring to the US).

Stephen Fry has put himself in an odd position, the more popular he gets the more distant he has to make himself or he’ll collapse under the load. If every follower sends just one tweet per month, poor Mr Fry gets 1 tweet every 3 minutes continuously throughout a 24 hour period. If he tries to read them during the say 8 hours of work time, then that’s 1 per minute – so one can assume a lot go unread.

Let’s hope Twitter doesn’t drive Mr Fry to distraction.

@stevekennedyuk, though not as interesting as @stephenfry

One thing that I love most about Twitter is its openness. Anyone can tweet, anyone can follow, and everyone (whether or not you know them properly or not) can engage in some sort of conversation (mind you, Ewan wouldn’t totally agree on that point).

But it’s the openness that Twitter has that amazes me the most. Whist I don’t have nor aim to have hundreds of followers, those few that I do have are very insightful. Just having a platform that requires no time or dedication such as Facebook does for instance, Twitter is simple. It’s easy, fun and you can converse with anyone for as long or short as you so choose.

However, other than people who I know purely online (such as many MIR readers), there is not a single person who I am either following or being followed by who falls into the category of either “Friends” or “Family”… Not one.

This doesn’t surprise me, as actually many of my actual friends only became truly aware of what it is that I am doing when I am constantly texting Twitter all the time when Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry had a fairly notable conversation on the television.

Now I could say “Oh, well Twitter needs to change that! More young people the better!” but actually I disagree.

I love Twitter. I like the way it is now, I like the majority of the people who use it, and I think it’s a brilliant place just to sit back and watch. I don’t want it spoiled with constant streams of “Lol”, “LMAO” and all of the other acronyms that I don’t know the meaning of.

And this will happen if Twitter continues to get the recognition through its “Celeb Users” such as Mr. Fry or Jonathan; it will hit the same spiral of slowing decay that has hit Myspace, Bebo and even Facebook over the recent years. And as much as I hate to say it, it’s the teens that do it!

I mean can you imagine it, a surge of “Twitter Whores”, creating endless chains of “followers”, all of whom are about fifteen years old, and look somewhat odd in their display picture.

I hate to sound like an “old fart”, but I cannot stand this thought; and I bet I won’t be the only one either!

That’s why I think it should be preserved. Whilst it should be able to grow and become better, and improve, should that happen at such a cost to all of us who actually enjoy and utilise the platform?

Samantha
samantha@mobileindustryreview.com

Last night, Stephen Fry got stuck in a lift. Or an elevator.

How did I know this?

Well, I first noticed after a few of my Twitter friends — Martin and Jonathan — pointed out that after my rant about #uksnow, I was liable to go positively ballistic on finding out about the #frylift tag.

The #frylift hashtag on Twitter was setup immediately to manage the avalanche of comments in response to this Tweet from Stephen Fry:

Ok. This is now mad. I am stuck in a lift on the 26th floor of Centre Point. Hell’s teeth. We could be here for hours. Arse, poo and widdle.

Within moments Mr Fry had taken a Twitpic or two and they were online for everyone to see and retweet. Here’s one of them:

Fascinating.

Now whilst I thought the uksnow stuff on Monday was more or less a waste of time (I liked the proof of concept, but I felt it was a bit… banal), I have a totally different viewpoint of the ‘fry-in-a-lift’ Twitter hashtag.

That is entertaining.

It’s entertaining because it’s Stephen Fry.

And because he uses phrases like, ‘Arse, poo and widdle.’

No wonder that pages and pages and PAGES of #frylift comments started flying. The fact that Mr Fry was stuck in a lift was rather irrelevant for most of his followers — the key point was that he was ‘live’ — reading and responding to messages. Witness this Tweet:

Your brilliant comments are keeping us all (hysterically) cheerful. Last a heard engineers still on their way

If you’d like to talk to the chap, that was a particularly good time to do it.

And if you’d like to just sit back and ‘be close’ to the man — sit and watch.

Which leads me to ponder… at 111,566 followers (currently), at what point will a Stephen Fry show — a live experience such as #frylift become commercially viable?

At what point will Mr Fry’s agents sit back and think… right then… You’ve got Ricky Gervais and his podcasts making millions. So if we have 111,566 followers… how many of them would pay a fiver a month to ‘Tweet’ with Stephen?

And to participate in some live interactive ‘things’?

Quite a lot, I reckon.

Assume, for the sake of argument that every single subscriber would chuck up 5 quid a month.

That’s £557,830 revenue per month. Or a smidgen under £7m a year.

And he’s only just started.

If The Sun and the rest of the mainstream media continues to push — and CRUCIALLY, EDUCATE — the normobs across the country, that 111,566 subscribers could shortly hit half a million. Or a million.

The revenue possibilities are fascinating to consider.

How many watching the #frylift entertainment experience last night would have paid £29.99 for a one-hour exclusive pass to watch the live QIK stream of the event?

Perhaps that’s taking it a little bit too far.

But if you look at the games that Stephen is routinely playing with his followers — setting questions, tasks and so on — with little prizes… we’re not a million miles away from some kind of QI-Twitter-Gameshow-Live-Entertainment-Stephen-Fry-Mashup, are we?

Why bother presenting QI on the BBC when (looking into the future) you can reach a bigger, guaranteed, responsive and cash-rich audience via your own @stephenfry channel?

Watch this space!

Here’s the first one he answered:

Q. Who is Stephen Fry?
A. A man trying to get through life without hurting or being hurt. Failing, but trying. For further information, ask AQA.
A. A man trying to get through life without hurting or being hurt. Failing, but trying. For further information, ask AQA.

Check out the rest here.

The S2 is a small, neat unit, manufactured by the Chinese company Amoi. Along the bottom of its bright, clear screen parades a line of familiar icons that allow instant access to Google, Facebook, Windows Messenger and, of course, Skype. It is the work of a moment to input your Skype username and password, and have your buddy list come up and integrate itself instantly with the phone’s address book. You are Skyping in seconds.