Oprah Reaches Out To Her Audience Through The Interactive Web

Oprah is bringing her magic touch to the web. She has recently ventured into offering podcasts of interviews on iTunes, and teaching classes online using Silverlight and Skype. The classes will be based on Eckhart Tolle's book “A New Earth!”

You may not like Oprah. You may even think that she homogenizes everything from literature to news to make it all palatable to the Oprah Army. But you can't deny that she has done more to get people involved in reading, charity, self improvement and more over the decades than just about any other female public figure in recent memory. If Oprah sets her sights on something, chances are it will give whatever it is a boost into the stratosphere.

Oprah has now set her sights on using the internet to reach her viewing audience in a new and interactive way. Whether or not the subject matter is worthwhile is beside the point in this equation. What makes this interesting are the tools Oprah has chosen.

Silverlight is a new tool by Microsoft that is designed to be a competitor to Adobe Flash. Perhaps because it is saddled with the Microsoft label and a high price tag for developers, it has had trouble gaining traction against the now-standard Flash. Having Oprah in its corner could do wonders to give it the toehold it needs to be around long enough to compete against the existing giant, Flash.

The other tool chosen by Oprah is Skype. Skype has been around for a while now as a way to make cheap calls, video chat and instant message. It has had trouble catching on with multi-taskers like myself because it doesn't offer a way to use its IM feature in a program like Adium or Trillian. It's quite popular with people looking to make cheap phone calls and a reliable video chat; however, and this could push it out into the mainstream by showing it to less tech savvy people who may not have heard of it before now.