It may be the biggest announcement in the history of Twitter… Oprah is coming.

While Twitter has been raising its profile in the mainstream media for quite some time, an endoresement by Oprah Winfrey may be what pushes it over the edge into complete acceptance.  Ms. Winfrey has taken control of the @Oprah account on Twitter, and apparently she will be sending the first Tweet, user slang for the messages, while on the show.  She will also have Ashton Kutcher, the first Twitter user to be in striking distance of 1 million followers, to talk about his love affair with the service.

Twitter has been growing by insane leaps and bounds, but now that Oprah is on board, a woman who can merely mention a book’s title and see it sell hundreds of thousands of copies, what will become of the service?  We could possible be seeing a huge onslaught of the “Fail Whale”?  For those not in the know, you can check out this cartoon for an idea of what the Fail Whale is about, but it is essentially a cartoon looking whale the site shows anytime it is having technical difficulties.  This used to be a fairly common occurence during times of high traffic, but it has luckily disappeared over time.  Is Twitter ready for an onslaught by Oprah’s loyal fans?

If there is any doubt about Oprah’s power, as I write this, without one word appearing on her account yet, she is already at almost 48,000 followers.  This is with no formal announcement, no TV episode yet, nothing, just her mere presence on the account has brought in that many followers.  How many new accounts will appear tomorrow?  Personally, I am not a fan of Oprah, or to be more blunt, I really dislike her (as is made fairly clear in this Oprah podcast I did a few months back with my best friend), but there is no denying that when she speaks, people listen.  This will be a huge boost for Twitter, but hopefully the early adopters of the service will be understanding as the service tries to adjust to the onslaught of the Oprah faithful.

I am thrilled I joined Twitter when I did (@seanpaune), and I am willing to stick out a few rough days, and I have a feeling all of the old faithful users are going to be experience as the Oprah leions descend upon us… someone pass out the canned food and we’ll head to the fallout shelters.