Kutcher Challenges CNN To Twitter Contest
UPDATE: During the overnight hours, Kutcher won the contest. CNN conceded defeat with this post: "Ashton Kutcher is first to reach 1 million followers in Twitter contest with CNN."
News network CNN and Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher are preparing for a Twitter duel.
The television star and husband of actress Demi Moore is in a competition with the news network to see who can be the first to attain one million followers on micro-blogging service Twitter.
Kutcher, who is known as @aplusk on Twitter, challenged CNN when he noticed he had nearly the same number of followers as the news network.
"I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as an entire media company can on Twitter," said the 31-year-old Kutcher in a video posted to Qik.com.
The actor vowed to ring the doorbell on the house of CNN founder Ted Turner and quickly run away if he reaches one million followers first.
Turner no longer owns the news network, but CNN took up the challenge with a video response by talk show host Larry King.
"Hey Kutcher, are you putting me on? Are you kidding? Do you think you can take on an entire network?” King said.
"Do you know how big we are? Do you know what CNN is? Kutcher, you’re playing out of your league. CNN will bury you," King said jokingly.
All joking aside, Kutcher has since promised to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to a charity fighting disease in Africa if he wins the challenge. He will also give a copy of the popular videogame “Guitar Hero” to his millionth follower.
Videogame publisher Electronic Arts has upped the anty, announcing that it will put Kutcher’s one millionth follower in its Sims videogame and give them all of EA’s 2009 titles.
CNN, known on Twitter as @cnnbrk, announced that it had not even owned the twitter account until purchasing it this week from a British web developer.
Kutcher, who has appeared on panels at Internet conferences across the country discussing “New Media,” says he sees his popularity as evidence of the rise of social media.
"I think it’s a huge statement about social media for one person to actually have the ability to broadcast to as many people as a major media network," Kutcher said.
"I think it sort of signifies the turning of the tide from traditional news outlets to social media outlets, social news outlets," Kutcher added.
"With our video cameras on our cellphones and our picture cams and our blogging and our Twittering and our posting and our Facebooking we actually become the source of the news and the broadcasters of the news and the consumers of the news," he said.
Many other celebrities have also adopted social networking as a means to shape their own image.
Kutcher’s wife, Demi Moore, is also on Twitter under the handle @mrskutcher, and has amassed nearly 550,000 followers.
This week Kutcher surpassed pop singer Britney Spears, who has 915,000 followers.
Kutcher and Moore personally update their Twitter accounts, while Spear’s feed is primarily updated by her publicist.
Image Courtesy UPI
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