So Conan O’Brien was not the chosen one in the NBC boardroom, but on the internet, he has overtaken Jay Leno’s popularity with internet speed.
The “I’m with COCO” fan page on Facebook (run by Mike Mitchell and friends) is listed as a religious organization and has 960,283 followers as of the writing of this post. There are a few imitators with followers that come to about 90,000. Another 67,000 are fans of either Conan’s page or the Late Night with Conan page. In comparison to Conan’s million plus, Jay Leno’s one and only fan page has 45,871 fans.
On Weds, the L.A. Time Technology blog reported that Conan O’Brien began tweeting on Wednesday and in just over an hour “surpassed “The Jay Leno Show’s” official Twitter profile, which has been around since April 2009. In just a couple of hours, he doubled Leno’s 30,000 or so followers.”
Conan’s first tweet:
Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.
All of this popularity seems to support the idea that he should take his show online. Sure there are challenges, but The New York Times BITS blog used Seth MacFarlane as an example of what’s already being done and said “There would also be lots of opportunities to try new financing models and break some of the traditional rules of television, something Mr. O’Brien has always done well in the past.”
Revision3, an internet television site, issued an open letter to the late-night talk show host, promising him the opportunity to create a brand new show that could generate significant revenue, if not the same level of revenue, under their broadcast model.
So just wait and watch for Conan online!
Tags: Facebook, Internet Speed, Twitter