We’ve talked about this at length before, but in the three months leading up to Jimmy Fallon’s debut as the Late Night host last night, he did an extraordinary job of building strong roots in both the geek and social-media communities (which, as you might expect, have substantial overlap). In particular, he has been incredibly successful at harnessing the power of Twitter to engage his audience. In fact, when we wrote a story about Fallon on Twitter yesterday, the host had accumulated 179,182 followers. This morning, he added over 5,000 new followers to bring his total to 184,390 (and climbing). So how did Fallon’s legions of Twitter friends react to his show last night? We combed through the 1,500-plus tweets that included the search term “Jimmy Fallon†and brought you ten of our faves.
• “Jimmy fallon’s first night tonight. Hope you rocks it out! I’m going to keep a running tally of how many times he giggles at himself.†— aplusk (a.k.a. Ashton Kutcher) was concerned about Fallon’s penchant for corpsing
• “@jimmyfallon Enjoyed your first show, but enjoyed watching you sweat profusely while talking to Robert De Niro even more!†— TheCliffLee must’ve been watching in HD, too
• “@jimmyfallon joHNNy CARSON iS TUrNInG OVER iN HIS grAVE†— You can safely put DaddyAK47 in the anti-Fallon camp
• “Thought having Van Morrison on @jimmyfallon was a rare, cool occurrence. But then I saw him again, same song and outfit, on Regis and Kelly†— brendancollins makes a good observation, but then again, it’s not like Van Morrison is known as a fashion plate
• “@jimmyfallon YOU SUCKED! Qwest & the Roots didn’t.†— thechickylala must be tight with DaddyAK47
• “@jimmyfallon I have to give you credit dude, that show was really good. I was expecting a train wreck. Terrific, very funny.†— keithwhamond damns Fallon with feint praise
• “@jimmyfallon don’t move back and forth too much during your monologue. Otherwise the show was awesome! Can’t wait for the rest†— mikeziegler clearly didn’t see Fallon’s web debut
• “@jimmyfallon Tell your advertisers that we 42 year olds from SC loved the show!†— preservationist clearly aspires to be a Blonde Mother from Connecticut
• “@jimmyfallon don’t move back and forth too much during your monologue. Otherwise the show was awesome! Can’t wait for the rest†— mikeziegler clearly didn’t see Fallon’s web debut
• “@jimmyfallon Nailed your first show. I have a site devoted to you: http://hiremejimmyfallon.com/†— lexfri is begging for a role as Staff Stalker at 30 Rock
Jimmy Fallon Search Results [Twitter]