Original Air Date:
Friday, April 17, 2009
Friday Live in Chicago with Nate Berkus:
Designer Nate Berkus joined the Friday Live panel for an episode to replace Mark Consuelos while he was on vacation. Nate shared that he has been spending his time traveling and decorating his boyfriend's house - which has landed in Elle Decor Magazine. Who else has a home surprisingly on the cover of the magazine as well? None other than Ali Wentworth! The panel discussed Ali's love of shopping flea markets and diy projects. From the look of Ali's living room and master bedroom, she can decorate like the pros.
The Friday Live Panel Talks Twitter:
With 14 million users and counting, Twitter has become the next big thing in social networking. Oprah decided to join in the hype and start her own account; posting her first 'tweet' live on the show. With many fake celebrity accounts floating around, Gayle King wasn't even able to use her own name to sign up for an account.
Ashton Kutcher helped put Twitter in the headlines nation-wide when he posted a vlog on YouTube April 13, 2009 responding to his more than 800,000 followers. Ashton couldn't believe that he had just about 50,000 less followers than media giant CNN.
Mentioning the possibility of reaching 1 million followers before CNN, a race was started. At 1am the morning of the show, Ashton beat out CNN while broadcasting live on the web. In the final hours, both Ashton Kutcher and Anderson Cooper were encouraging people to become followers via CNN and the live feed on the web.
As the crowned king of Twitter, Ashton Kutcher appeared on Oprah via Skype from LA for his first interview. The consensus of the panel was that Twitter is a great venue for a single person's voice to become as powerful as an entire media network.
Using the network to publish what he likes, "rally his peeps" and respond to media in a genuine way, Ashton feels that he is able to speak directly to his fans on Twitter, instead of going through magazines or publicists.
Oprah welcomed Twitter co-founder Evan Williams to the show to share a bit about the idea for the network. The idea for Twitter was to provide a fast and lightweight way for people to communicate. The term Twitter is a word that describes how birds communicate. Evan helped Oprah navigate her Twitter page so she could see the tweets she had received from Ellen and her more than 75,000 followers.
10 Year-Old Jordan Returns:
Oprah welcomed back 10 year-old Jordan to the panel, the little girl who had the sex talk with her mother alongside Dr. Berman. After showing a clip from the episode with Jordan and Dr. Berman, Oprah asked her about life at home after the show. Jordan shared that friends as school asked about the topic, but she only told them that it was big girl talk and they needed to speak to their own parents. Once she returned home, Jordan also had additional questions for her mom, but she was glad to have the curious thoughts out of her mind.
Using the information she received from doing the show, Jordan went home and spoke to her friends and their mothers about opening up the conversation about sex and what kind of dialogue they needed to have. Jordan suggested the mothers use the actual names of sex organs, include diagrams, and start slow with basic mechanics.
The panel commended Jordan for her great interviewing skill, comfort in front of the camera, and her strength to be confident enough in herself to have such a difficult conversation on television.
Britain's Got Talent:
To end the show, the panel shared a clip from Britain's Got Talent featuring Susan Boyle, a 47 year-old woman who wowed the judges. Her performance was completely unexpected and the audience and judges were initially skeptical of the woman and rude in judging her before she began. Oprah announced that she is working on getting Susan Boyle on to the show for an interview soon.