Kiwi woman turns celeb with 25,000 Twitter followers after online chat show!

WELLINGTON - An online chat show has turned a Kiwi woman into an instant celebrity with 25,000 followers on Twitter.

Lisa Etheridge, 39, a mother of one from Auckland, signed up for an account with micro-blogging website Twitter as part of a Unitec class exercise to promote relations with sister universities in Ireland and Chile.

Initially, Etheridge, a self-confessed technophobe, had just two classmates registered as followers and posted just one message under the pseudonym LisaTickledPink - “I hate technology.”

Then journalist Leo Laporte and Internet entrepreneur Kevin Rose, the founder of one of the world’s biggest social sites, Digg.com, decided to randomly pick a Twitter account and recommend people sign on as followers.

They were running a live Internet chat show, watched by 175,000 people.

“Hold on, I think I may have found a user. LisaTickledPink says ‘I hate technology,’” Stuff.co.nz quoted Kevin Rose as telling viewers on the show.

Leo Laporte responded: “Oh that’s it, that sounds like the right person for us. OK, let’s see what we can do.”

And since the exchange, 25,000 Twitter users began following Etheridge - and now she has reached the top 2 per cent of most followed among all 6.5 million worldwide Twitter users.

“The first thing that ran through my mind was that I had made a big mistake when I joined up,” she said.

“I couldn’t figure out why everyone was emailing me, I just assumed ‘oh no, I pushed the wrong button or ticked the wrong box,’” she added.

But now she is a Twitter fan and an Internet celebrity.

“I have got my own help centre now, it’s just incredible. If I have any questions about anything to do with technology or anything for that matter, within one minute, two minutes, I have got about 50 to 60 responses and they just keep coming through the day. It is fantastic in that sense and everybody is very gracious,” she said. (ANI)