Photo: vpjayant

Famed comedian and social commentator Stephen Fry has translated his real world popularity to the Internet, where he’s added some new tricks to his repertoire: the ability to down websites with zero hacking skills.

Twitter killer

Fry, who has over a million followers on Twitter, told .net that he has had websites crash from sending out a single tweet with a link to that site. It’s gotten so bad, Fry said, that he’s actually gotten into the habit of contacting the websites maintainers before sending out these tweets to warn them of the impending doom. Fry says he’s often greeted with a ‘yeah, whatever, we’ll scale just fine’ type of response, only to have his Nostradamus-like prediction prove true when over 3,000 of his followers send requests per second to the site in question.

The social media joke

Photo: Twitter

What’s particularly funny about this soothsaying is Fry crashed .net itself when he linked to the aforementioned interview. It almost seems in Fry’s world, nobody seems to want to listen or learn from the man.

Fry’s ability to get people to click on a link at his will confirms the power social media has when in the right hands. With credibility and reach, as well as a relationship of trust, all this Facebook and Twitter business many previously dismissed as time killers has still untapped potential for commerce and publishing.

Tweets, jokes and revenue

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Other than Fry, many famous people from comedians to politicians, musicians and actors use Twitter as a direct line to their audience and fan base. Given the site’s extreme popularity, sending out over 50 million tweets daily and recently crossing the 10 billionth tweet mark, it’s clear Twitter has the world’s attention.

The company is set to finally turn the revenue tap on to see if they can replicate their community success with comparable revenue success. Fry, who’s a huge fan of the service, certainly hopes so, so that he can, at the very least, show off his unmatched online influence.