Did George Hook Cause the Twitter Numbers to Jump?

I was part of a panel at the last Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Masterclass moderated by Darragh Doyle and had the pleasure of listening to Roger Galligan from Cognotent (also Irish blogs and Irishpressreleases.ie).   In his presentation he discussed how the traditional media was one of the key drivers of new media tools and platforms.  No real surprise here but he had some great examples including a large jump in Irish Twitter joiners when George Hook of the Right Hook Show joined and discussed twitter on the show.  The shows twitter feeds are now follwed by over 3,855 people.

I have heard estimates of current Irish Twitter users ranging from 8,000 to 20,000 but certainly it has experienced unquestionable growth.  This scarey growth path is tempered slightly by the Nielsen survey which maintains there is a 40% retention rate with 60% of US users failing to return a month after signing up.

The Right Hook is not the only media outlet to have a Twitter feed.  The Irish Times use it mainly as a distribution medium for breaking news but I believe Twitter is an ideal medium for radio and especially live shows, both as an update mechanism and also engaging people and offering an opportunity to repond/discuss as the show is in progress.  This could have a pretty big impact on their SMS text ins especially if they are using premium text in numbers.

Roger also discussed the good and the bad of Twitter espcially on the Swine Fever outbreak, similar to Karlin Lillington Irish Times article but I think this cartoon that he showed capture it very nicely.

Swine Fever Cartoon