4.19.2009

ASHTON KUTCHER VS. CNN.... FIGHT!



Ashton Kutcher's Twitter win

The weirdest media showdown of all time is over, said Daniel Terdiman in CNET News. Actor Ashton Kutcher beat CNN in a race to be the first Twitter user with 1 million followers. The contest was meaningless—but the spectacle of Kutcher, live online via UStream.tv, and CNN's Anderson Cooper "each pimping their Twitter accounts" was one for the ages.

We had the first man on the moon, and now we have the first man with 1 million Twitter followers, said MG Siegler in TechCrunch. Kutcher, along with his actress wife Demi Moore, opened his account on the microblogging site just a few months ago, so he's a "true Web success story." But "a million users is significant only in that it means Twitter is hugely popular—which we already knew."

Don't sell Ashton Kutcher short, said Andrew Cherwenka in The Huffington Post. In his livecast, "he read followers' tweets on air, answered questions, and actively engaged his audience on Twitter." In the process Kutcher publicized his "chosen charity, www.malarianomore.org," and called attention to his next cause, fighting human trafficking. "Kutcher gets new media."