First of all, yes, it is a slow news day. Typically, I don’t take my news queues from Techcrunch, particularly when it has to do with pop-culture reporting. Still, a post there regarding an odd choice by new-Twitterer Conan O’Brien is worthy of note.

Conan O’Brien, as you know, was forced out of late night television some time back. We talked here a bit about the prospect of him taking his act online, but we were thinking in terms of an online video show. As it turns out, he’s decided to simply take his act to Twitter.

Since then, he hasn’t followed anyone back, despite having amassed well north of half a million followers in a few short days … that is until today. About two hours ago, Conan said: “I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.”

Why is this at all interesting? I pondered that myself, actually, until I came across this comment on Google Buzz from Charlie Arnold:

It’s relevant as a commentary on the power of the platform, the value of Twitter as a force multiplier.

A few weeks ago Conan could have done a television bit at the cost of a gazillion dollars a minute that put some random peanut-butter loving woman in the spotlight. It would have gotten a few laughs and she would have made the local news.

Today for the cost of typing three sentences he brought her to the attention of 535,000 people. She’s picked up 225 followers since I started typing this post.

What does that mean? Maybe a lot, it depends on what she does with it.

Consider it in light of the recent Kevin Smith story. He used his 1.2 million followers to extract a mea culpa from a $10.4 billion dollar airline. What will the Conan effect be?

The effect has snowballed since. As of this moment, Twittercounter is showing just how dramatic the rise in Sarah’s follow count has been:

At the time of this writing, she’s closing in on 6,000 follows, and the effect is bleeding through to her fiance (@badghandi89), who she mentioned once incorrectly in a tweet, and then properly. He went from a dozen or so followers to over 150 in under an hour.

What does it mean for this young lady? It’s hard to say at this point, but it definitely shows how Conan was able to transform his celebrity status, and a poor situation into something monetizable online. Whether it was just a humorous lark or an experiment by Conan, this move might prove his touch is golden, regardless of whether he has a big studio behind him.

That might be particularly useful to him, for business purposes, should he decide to to strike out alone.