Here's an amazing demonstration of the power of Twitter. 21 hours ago, actor, awards show host, former Doogie Houser star and current cultural touchstone Neil Patrick Harris (known as NPH to many) created his first Tweet. http://twitter.com/ActuallyNPH Here are the stats as of a few minutes ago.

5 Following 58,891 Followers 2,029 Listed

So, he's following 5 people, almost 59 thousand are following him already, and over 2 thousand have put him on one of their Twitter lists. That's fairly impressive for 21 hours.

How did NPH achieve such meteoric Twitter success? Even for someone as well known as NPH, it can't have been easy. Or can it? As with anything, it pays to have friends. In his case, at least three - Nathan Fillion, Alyson Hannigan and Felicia Day. If you don't know who these people are, it's not hard to find out - NPH is following Fillion and Day. If you haven't recognized these names yet, all three actors starred in a web series last year called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog. And they are famous friends of Joss Whedon. If you are still in the dark, don't worry - just look at the numbers.

Fillion has over a quarter million followers. Day has over a million and a half, astonishing considering she is mostly famous for a couple of web series. Alyson Hannigan has only about 60 thousand, but then again, she Tweets under her married name of Aly Denisof. And actually, Fillion only Tweeted about NPH about fifteen minutes ago, so he has hardly anything to do with the surge. Chalk it all up to Felicia Day, an actress who has never had her own TV series but is wise in the ways of the web.

Oh, and by the time I finished this blog post, NPH has got up to

5 Following 66,051 Followers 2,206 Listed