Oprah Uses iPad To Promote Her Love Of Microsoft Surface

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 20, 2012 3:45PM

Oprah Winfrey promoted her love of the new Microsoft Surface tablet as one of her favorite things, and even tweeted Sunday night she bought a dozen of them for her friends as Christmas gifts.

There was only one problem: The Big O sent out the tweet from her Echofon app for iPad. It’s the kind of promotion marketers can’t buy—and may not want to. And it may end up selling a lot of Surfaces and iPads as the holiday shopping season approaches.

At the very least, it raises the questions of how popular a Winfrey endorsement goes these days and how much (if anything) she was paid by Microsoft to promote a tablet computer that has been largely panned by both analysts and Microsoft’s partners. Salvador Rodriguez, writing for the Los Angeles Times, noted that the Winfrey tweet reinforces one of the Surface’s criticisms: a lack of apps for the tablet.

Whether a Winfrey endorsement will lead to increased sales is anyone’s guess, especially since she doesn’t have The Oprah Winfrey Show as a platform anymore. Sure, she has her own network, but the Oprah Winfrey Network, after launching to low ratings, has started to gain some stride and posted double digit gains across all major demographics in the previous quarter.

Maybe Oprah’s seal of approval—even from an iPad—may still be enough for Microsoft’s efforts to sell the Surface as a major competitor to the iPad.