Probably one of the most exciting events to ever occur in the history of the internet started this week on August 13th 2009 when Ashton Kutcher posted a video on Youtube challenging CNN to a Twitter race to the first one to hit 1 million followers. The next day Larry King representing CNN accepted the challenge by stating that one man can’t beat an entire network and jokingly telling Kutcher that CNN will “Bury him”
The entire world was logging onto Twitter and following both @aplusk and @cnnbrk. Earlier on CNN had 897,969 followers compared to Ashton who had 842,550 – about a 55,000 people difference. Both parties went straight to work and spread the word that the challenge had been made.
Everyone got involved, fellow twitter-ers spread the word on their blogs, on their twitter feeds, on Facebook and through word of mouth. Electronic Arts (EA) made an offer to give the 1,000,000th person to follow @aplusk (Kutcher) a copy of every game EA makes in 2009 for the system of their choice and a playable character based on them will be created in the Sims 3, As well EA said they would donate 5,000 mosquito nets in the name of the 1 millionth follower.
Other celebrity twitter users like P. Diddy and Ellen Degeneres chimed in and encouraged other users to follow Ashton. Last night Kutcher learned that CNN was on the air trying to recruite people and get them to follow CNN on Twitter. He retaliated by going live on his ustream channel and kept people updated.
Chartbeat was following both feeds live providing updates on the amount of followers each user had (and still is). Ashton was surrounded by his family and friends as they awaited to see who the winner would be, at this point it looked like Ashton was going to win as he was in the lead with more then 1,000 followers ahead of CNN.
As Ashton waited he spoke about how the media is changing and how the internet enables us to control what we consume. The news we see on television is controlled by the major corporations that run the studios, they are able to bend the news anyway they see fit. On the web we are able to filter out the news or content we don’t want to view and subscribe and further investigate the information we are interested about.
Ashton expressed that Twitter and other social networking websites are great because we basically are able to post and review the content we find interesting and headline the news that actually concerns us. No editing by bias corporations, and no commercials. He also mentioned his belief that television and that your household computer will one day integrate.
At around one in the morning on April 17th around 11,000 people were watching the live stream myself included. It was already quite evident who was going to get to one million first. Kutcher and his wife (Demi Moore) and friends gathered around the computer and watched the charts, but then realized that the numbers were a little bit slower then on the actual Twitter site. It got very exciting as they got the champagne ready, everyone grew tense as it came closer to the finish line. Loud shouts and clapping as Ashton reached 1,000,000 followers,
The excitement was escalated when Sean Diddy Combs (P. Diddy) called Ashton to congratulate him on his big win. He was expressing how great it was, and how much of a historical event it was. Kutcher presented the $100,000 cheque to www.nomoremalaria.org which he promised to make if he won, as well as donating 10,000 mosquito bed nets. He was on Oprah earlier speaking about his accomplishment which can be seen here. He also went on to talk to Larry King from CNN and had answered questions on ustream which can also be seen here.
Tune in sometime next week for Larry King and Ashtons one hours live segment.
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