Janet CollinsAshton Kutcher is the King Tweet
April 18th 2009 21:01
The race that's been talked about all week for the first Twitterer to have one million followers has been won by 31 year old model, actor and active Twitterer, Ashton Kutcher.
Kutcher, star of That 70s Show and husband of Demi Moore, had challenged the CNN newsfeed to a race for the first to have one million followers on Twitter. The race was a close one and at one point CNN was out in front, but Kutcher got across the line first, a little more than 2,000 followers in front of the media giant.
The race gained momentum and attention as the week moved on and on Wednesday, Britney Spears threw her hat into the ring too, hoping to boost her already enormous Twitter following of 940,000. At that point Kutcher’s Twitter page had more than 966,000 followers and CNN’s breaking news Twitter page was out in front with 973,000 followers.
It was all a lot of harmless fun and a charity is also a winner. Kutcher had pledged to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to the Malaria No More Fund in time for World Malaria Day on 25 April if he won, the cost of which he estimates to be around $10,000.
Kutcher says it is more though. The race proves, he says, that one person can have as big a voice as a giant media outlet and that’s good for democracy.
Celebrities are clamouring to climb aboard the Twitter craze, if they’re not on it already. Only last week Oprah Winfrey took the plunge and gained more than 130,000 in less than a day. Australian actor, Hugh Jackman, recently announced on Twitter that he would donate $100,000 to someone’s favourite non-profit organisation. Followers just have to convince him, in the 140 characters or less, why their charity organisation should be the one.
A winner in the whole campaign also has to be Twitter. All this publicity about high profile celebrities sending regular tweets and using the whole application for charitable campaigns can’t be doing them any harm.
The thing is, Twitter actually promotes itself on its home page as “a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
Friends, family and co-workers would rarely, if for anyone, reach one million or anywhere near it and recently the use of Twitter by celebrities has come under a lot of criticism. A slip of the tongue last week by Hugh Jackman when he admitted a “tweet” was done by an assistant raised a lot of eyebrows.
The “tweet” was only about having lunch across from the Opera Centre in Sydney but it confirmed what most of us knew anyway. Celebrities are using the site for blatant public relations purposes rather than personal messages and someone is “twittering” their messages for them.
While they are all saying this Twitter thing is bringing them all so closer to their fans, it’s really just another way of getting noticed. Most of them would hardly have the time to “tweet” all day long themselves anyway.
Sources:
www.smh.com.au
www.latimes.com
www.brisbanetimes.com.au
www.livenews.com
Image Credit: www.unrealitytv.co.uk
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Comment by Morgan Bell
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Thanks.
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Love or hate Ashton Kutcher? You decide it...!
Comment by Janet Collins
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I am sure it will be short lived, particularly because Oprah is now on there but I think it was a pretty good challenge for a week there and didn't hurt the "Twitter" branding either.
Thanks a lot.