Ashton Kutcher beats CNN to 1 million Twitter followers

This morning, April 17, 2009 at around 2AM, Ashton Kutcher has beat CNN to 1 million Twitter followers. Plenty of things were riding on this. Larry King said that one guy couldn’t be an entire network like CNN. I guess that wasn’t true.

Kutcher was using this as a means to promote a cure for malaria. CNN announced that Kutcher defeated them while Kutcher was on UStream.TV streaming about the victory. Kutcher thanked several people including Kevin Rose for getting him the win.

What did he say during his UStream victory party? Here are some quotes and paraphrasing from the video (Thanks to Gadgetell writer Shawn Ingram for getting them).

• “CNN went on full blast on live TV, what are they afraid of?”

far more relevant than the web, but what happens when the tide changes

• “This is a media revolution,” when talking about Anderson Cooper talking about it on TV
• [Re: malaria] “Why not focus on one thing, wipe it out, and move on to the next?”
• “You can’t watch the establishment right now, you have to be with we the people”
• “We’re gonna change the world” -p.diddy
• It’s a new generation, and they’re speaking, and they’re loud.
• Today we have done something extraordinarily special. We have shown the world the new way is here.

What was riding on this? Kutcher said he would punk Ted Turner if he won and Electronic Arts said that if Kutcher won that the one millionth follower would end up in one of EA’s games. Additionally, Kutcher said he would donate $100,000 to a charity to aid in cure for malaria if he won.

What does this mean for the rest of us? Well, Twitter’s already pretty mainstream and there’s supposed to be a big announcement today. Is this the “jump the shark” moment or does this legitimize Twitter a bit?

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