Oprah to appear on Facebook Live to help Oprah.com

Though she mastered the art of TV, the Web is a whole new thing... and social media is here to help

On May 25, 2011, the world ended. After a quarter century of emotional, ratings-transcending television, Oprah hosted the finale of her Oprah Winfrey Show. Though the end finally came for good, it wasn’t the end for Oprah media content.

Facebook revealed this week that Oprah will appear on an episode of Facebook Live, where she’ll be answering questions submitted by users through the site. While chatting with fans through the social network is always a good idea, the New York Post reports that Oprah’s trip to Silicon Valley is just as much about teaching the classic media maven to embrace newer, social technologies.

In other words, she needs help getting traffic to her site.

After her show ended, it only makes sense that site visits would dip a bit. When people were engaging with her show on a regular basis, they’d likely be directed to the site to learn more about a certain topic or to explore content related to what they had seen on TV. Now, without those referrals, traffic is suffering.

Leading up to the finale, Oprah.com actually hit 400,000 daily visitors every so often, according to data from Quantcast. However, after the nearly 800,000 visitor peak in May (probably related to the finale), the site has since struggled to stay above 200,000 daily visitors. That means traffic may have been cut in half in less than half a year.

Oprah’s appearance on Facebook alone will probably work wonders for her site’s traffic. The talk is set to take place on Thursday, September 8 from 1:30 to 2:30 PDT.

As part of the usual way of doing things on Facebook Live, Oprah has opened up to questions from the social network’s users. Based on a cursory look at what’s being asked so far, it looks like the topics of conversation will range from the practical to the personal:

How can we get our daily Oprah fix without your talk show?

Hey Oprah, I live in Birmingham Alabama, and I was wondering if you ever miss living in the south, and do you make many visits to your home region? :)

Hey Oprah. I understand that you, meaning all of us, are what we think about all day. What kinds of things would you say occupy your thought space? For example, when you wake up in the morning, what is the first thing on your mind and how much attention do you give to it?

To RSVP for the event or ask a question, visit the Facebook event page.