The first man in space. The first man on the moon. The first man with a million Twitter followers. Yes, this is one of those great achievements in human history. Congratulations Ashton Kutcher.
His upbringing on Twitter was a humble one. The hugely popular actor started with just a handful of followers when he signed up a few months ago. But soon, he and his famous actress wife, Demi Moore, were adding thousands of followers a day. They would talk about nothing, like everyone else on Twitter, and sometimes they would talk about each other. It’s a true web success story.
Seriously though, I, like the rest of you, am glad this is over. A million users is significant only in that it means Twitter is hugely popular — which we already knew. And that it’s getting taken over by celebrities — which a lot of us saw coming. Much more interesting will be when some non-celebrity feed passes a million followers. But it may be a long time before that happens. The name of the game on Twitter is self promotion, and celebrities have a huge advantage in that department over regular folks.
It’s nice that Kutcher will be donating 10,000 bed nets to fight malaria in Africa. Hopefully we’ll hear about that more tomorrow when he’s on Oprah (and she starts tweeting). We’ll see if Kutcher also follows through on his initial promise to ding dong ditch Ted Turner.
KING you like apples? aston got a million. HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES!?
kutcher is a douchebag. this whole thing is just a drama to drive traffic to blahgirls. cheap strategy, but somehow you guys took the bait.
just cause he married granny, dat dont make him a douchebag!
Anybody willing to make a bet that Oprah will be first to 100million?
That’s a tricky bet. 100 million is a long ways away.
I don’t think Ashton married “granny”, in fact I think he got the best part of the deal. If you listen to Demi she is one of the most down to earth people on twitter. Why people have to put down someone that has worked damn hard to be where she is is beyond me. It’s only your own lack of self-esteem that spews forth. Why don’t you try to do half the things she does for others then make a comment, nah that would be asking you to THINK!
Why is this a success story? He has 1,000,000 million followers, but what does that get him? This whole exercise has been childish and meaningless. Why anyone cares, I will never understand.
The main story we should be focusing on is this:
Twitter continues to NOT generate revenue in the face of massive growth, both in terms of user base and operational costs. In addition, the level of publicity the Twitter receives is disturbingly large given the product offered, and their viability as a business.
As far as I’m concerned, publications like TC lose credibility with continued coverage of Twitter. There are hundreds if not thousands of other companies out there that you should be focusing on. Instead, you give us this drivel. Twitter? Ashton Kutcher? Are you fucking kidding me?
@Anon,
The fact that you think Twitter doesn’t have a business model with all the data they are aggregating, etc. is exactly why they are where they are, and you are where you are — whining.
The data they are aggregating? What, a bunch of meaningless 140 character snippets? Look, it’s 2009 and all of you idealists need to wake up. The founders of Twitter may get rich off of a bunch of fools like yourself, but only and idiot would think Twitter is viable as a long-term property.
They are where they are not because of the product, but because of the founders and the investors. This is a classic corporate boy’s club, and a bunch of people are running a smoke and mirrors scheme to make bank. I feel bad for people who can’t see that, especially given the role the media is playing (PR handjobs, etc., all for a piece of the pie, even if not well defined at this point). You either understand how a business like this operates or you don’t. Obviously, you don’t.
@Anon – you really are clueless. I’m sure you’re thrilled that you were able to put together two paragraphs of sentences, and even got to use the $2 phrase “smoke and mirrors”, but you really don’t understand how things work.
@anon — you are 100% correct.
it’s amazing all the little kiddies (”twits”?) here who were too young to remember the .com boom/crash so long ago (for example).
“twitter drives traffic”, to what? no biz model, just “traffic”.
just like e-commerce and the .com boom — lots of traffic, no biz model.
comparison:
.com time: we have millions of users! we’ll make a fortune! biz model? we’ll figure that out later.
twitter time: we have millions of users! we’ll make a fortune! biz model? we’ll figure that out later.
everybody wants to make a quick buck these days. just like the .com days. and with mortgages. etc. that’s really what this is all about.
sorry people, you need to work to make a buck.
“twitter” is hot because it is “hot”. like paris hilton was hot because she is paris hilton.
no substance behind the fluff. just potential for a quick buck.
continued coverage of fads like “twitter” only hurt the industry in the long run.
whatever happened to real products? real services?
ah, but this is (r)evolution! short messages! everybody wants this! it will change the world!
the real value is minimal, the fad aspect is high. it’s hot.
unfortunately you need substance. time has proven this again and again.
TC used to be interesting, now it’s all “twitter”. they should change the name to “TwitterCrunch”. seriously.
I’m not going to follow TC anymore. sorry, a little bit of ad revenue will be lost. I’m sure you’ll make it up by using twitter, so no loss to you.
I’ll also get flamed for questioning the holiness of “twitter” and how it will rain wealth upon the masses, change the world, and so on.
whatever.
we’ll see.
@anon_rocks
Paris Hilton makes a ton of money. She is a perfect example of turning pure popularity into monetary success.
The substance that Twitter has are the networks, both the social network and the developer network. People using Twitter makes it valuable, like Facebook. Developers are building value into Twitter all the time as well by building new and useful tools. All they need to do to make money is charge for API access at some point in the future and let all the thousands of developers that are making apps figure out the other business models. Right now it makes more sense to grow it.
Twitter is a fad right now, but people are continuing to find new uses for the service all the time. I don’t see them disappearing into the sunset anytime soon.
When will these f*ckers learn time gap between innovation and revenue? Goog took 5-6 years to make profit.
Liked http://www.clasilistados.org
Thx for the advise
Jill
Great guys….. Nice topic
1 Million. Good very Good.
Well you mistyped Africa as “Afria” in the last para 1st line.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
Regardless of how many followers ashton or CNN have… the real winner here is Twitter.
You can’t buy publicity like this!
actually ashton wins too… he’s promoting his blahgirls website through his twitter account… it’s all a marketing stunt.
right on. and therein lies the risk for twitter as it morphs into a one-way street for star-struck fans from a communication network for users.
Take a look at http://www.clasilistados.org and find it out by yourself
I could care LESS what Ashton or Ophra do on Twitter or anything else. I haven’t given it a second thought. I follow whom I want and accept followers whom I want. Simple.
Congrats Ashton and team!
There were many glitches in middle.. sometimes 2 million count was shown by twitter for their accounts.
http://www.thew...gainst-cnn.html
Whoah that was a fast post! This rules. Soleil, call me.
great campaign. well played.
meanwhile, the pirate bays guys are going to Jail !
yeah!!! ashton rocks! congrats …
Ashton Rocks… even after winning the guy kept it humble. Great to someone so famous keep his feet down to earth.
Great to see*
Kutcher made it! The campaign started with Demi’s close-up shots, ran with war with CNN and now ended in a million…but as we know, not Kutcher, but Twitter is the winner here.
I wonder how much Twitter paid for this. The entire strategy seems like a repeat of the YouTube rise in popularity.
1. Massive promotion to drive traffic.
2. Sell with an unrealizable promise of potential future revenue
3. Retire
If the buyers decide to wait six months to see how this shakes out I bet that twitter loses its chance and sells for a pittance.
True Johnny. Its seems like a wave that will rest once Twitter is sold. Every new thing wears out of its newness…have to wait and watch how long Twitter be in limelight.
congrats ashton
This was actually fun to watch… creative technological trends r great to follow.
All good. Congrats for 1M…. and his wife is really hot.
The hottest grandma in the world! Geezus i would love to be on his shoes… well i mean on top of her.
This got up pretty quick. Is there a “Cnn won!” sitting in someones recycle bin right now? haha
I doubt the wrote such article… if cnn would have won they would have waited for tomorrow morning to finish it and publish it.
Let’s just say that I bet on the right horse. Had I not, I would not be very good at what I do.
Now lets see if we can reach a million on Friendfeed
That will be a task indeed!
Especially with the Friendfeed userbase presumed to be below a million at the moment as well. Ashton Kutcher’s challengeTV FTW
Friendfeed will be in the deadpool before you can get 1,000,000
This is a historic moment. I think the curve of adoption for social media has hit a high peak tonight!
I decided that this moment merited a little bit more than a text comment, so I posted my first seesmic vid below.
nice, I will watch.
Hi MG
You respond to inane comments from TC folks. But you dont bother to write back to some of the more meaningful ones, like ‘anon’ above.
Look, so many many people are trying to tell you guys at TC that you need to focus on companies that create new tangible biz models that we all (since I guess most readers are either entrepreneurs or dreaming to be) can learn from. Take Twitter do some analysis, tell us how you think that it will make be a sustainable business. Do some damn research instead of telling his about this silliness.
You guys are like the Cramer and his gang on CNN. As they hyped the bankers you hype these ridiculous companies.
Really, have you absolutely no desire to do good and provide value?
im siding with anon and monsoon on this one. im not finding AK’s rise to follow fame being legendary.
LegendLocator.com – game changers
I see that many of the accounts on twitter are accounts that follow lots of people, and are followed by lots of people, but never make a tweet.
It seems like the whole thing is a bit flimsy. If I were a power player I might be wary.
Yep! Twitter’s twitter everywhere. Sometimes you wonder if the twittering is too much and if you are just following the fad of the day.
Very cool to see Kutcher is donating money for something good
The next race is for 10 million ?
Like writerkols said Twitter is the biggest winner here
Of course, but Twitter is the even bigger winner tomorrow on Oprah — it’s going to be insane how many people sign up.
shame on u to peddle it so
You don’t think Twitter had a hand in this? They’re probably footing the charity bill to get PR. A lot of people are getting paid to use Twitter.
Twitter desperately needs a buyer or another cash infusion, and they’re building buzz to break the wariness barrier.
Great @aplusk well done
and all the involved in this to happend
Oprah will soon surpass them all. Though if @BarackObama cared, he would have reached 1,000,000 a long time ago. But I think he has better things to do with his time.
Yeah, if only @barackobama had nothing better to do…
Twitter is annoying to post and read.
The magic behind all of this is beyond me.
That’s why it’s magic.
wise words @parislemon
Blummi congratulates Ashton Kutcher for the great success!! This is a big step for the social media.
If a non-celebrity twitter feed passes 1 million followers- How is that possible? Aren’t they really a celebrity around the 100K mark?
A web celebrity at least I suppose.
congrats Twitter
Who is Ashton Kutcher ?
who are you?
I am goo.
twitter owes kutcher company shares
Officially 0.002% as popular as @aplusk.
Ashton is all about “democratizing media” as he put it… check out one of his investment projects: SaysMe.tv, a company that brings the power of the web to TV and allows anyone to upload and run their own content on television. No longer will corporations or politicians control what you see on any medium.
Congrats Ashton from your friends @SaysMeTeam
SaysMe is brandnew democracy…but is not also for dramatizing…???
An important moment in Internet history! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/4Eh29NmJPg_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”An important moment in Internet history! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/5tb7KA32zk”}}}
Thanks nick.
Check out Ashton here: http://twitya.com/#aplusk
There’s a number of media outlets listed and ready to go here: http://twitya.com/#cnnbrk
seriously. no more on this.
I’m tired of hearing about it too, but I still have to recognize the mainstream’s perception on all this. Way back when @garyvee said Oprah would be on Twitter someday, I thought he was crazy…
But that is the way of the world. Maybe Prez Obama would also be on Twitter soon..finding way out from his busy life. Then, we may talk of a 5+ million record…
Jealous much Crunchy? Go over paid movie celebs winning over tech celebs! /sarc
Lame. Is this type of coverage you hired Mr. Siegler for? Seriously, if this kind of thing starts repeating itself I’m gonna stop following TechCrunch. OK so you keep pushing Twitter, you’ve won, it’s massively popular now, OK? Please stop.
Fine. (Maybe.)
Please in the name of everything holy stop posting on Damn Twitter! I am sure you have earned whatever slice is coming to you? Can you now do some damn reporting?
I don’t know why, but of all the posts on this topic, this makes me smile the most. Thanks for posting.
I have a real question actually (amazingly) – whats ‘ding dong ditch’ ?
In Scotland we had ‘chap door runaway’, same thing?
Ding Dong Ditch is where you you ring the doorbell, then run away. Very popular with 8-year-old boys.
Yep same thing then, but we only got doorbells in Scotland in 2003
Bwahaha
who cares if he has a million followers big deal
how about the first person to follow 1,000,000 people…now that would take some real effort on someone’s part (no offense Ashton)
If Robert Scoble can manager 1000 Rss feeds, someone could pull off 1,000,000 twitter feeds. It would all depend on the client used, and the way it’s consumed.
Congrats Kuthcer!
But comparing this to the first man on moon and in space??? Cmoooon!!!
again with this Kutcher stupidity don’t you have any real startup to cover
Seriously if we aren’t talking about vagina, we aren’t really talking.
Its true, its all ego game, but you must admit if a person manage to get 1 M people to follow on this or that way than he obviously have something to give. I dont know much about Kutcher but I think that his contribution in making Social Networks go mainstream is great.
We must understand that everything in life have its extremes. Same in Twitter. Some people are pumping their folowers without real reason, some are quitely building their business on top of it and some of us are just happy to catch up with people we care.
Us being upset about these extrems (spammers) its vaste of time.
Service is there, use it best you can and one they somebody will come with something better. (followed up by extremes:-)
Siegler said…
It’s a true web success story.
Man, you’re truly mesmerized by something useless, ie, it is not something groundbreaking that’s gonna cure cancer or something that will advance civilization. The tone of your post is almost like worshiping something extraordinary that has been attempted by pioneers or scholars over the last few decades and failed but just now it’s just been broken.
Truly amazing Siegler.
And now the nominees for the Nobe Prize for tweeting to be considered by the Nobel committee are:
MG Siegler & Ashton Kutcher.
I think my sarcasm was pretty obvious — but clearly not for everyone. Oh well.
Don’t let them get to you.. this _is_ momentous
Good article and of course you published the article minutes after Kutcher broke the 1 million Twitter follower mark and beat CNN. I took a couple screen shot of Kutcher’s victory video if anyone missed it.
http://www.exam...wers-before-CNN
First man in space? first man on the moon???? you guys are freakin psathetic
Agreed if he was be serious, I don’t think he was though? At least I hope not.
for the idiots…..PATHETIC
ok.. unfollow if you can!.. seems to be a block..
geez.. i only wanted the mosquito nets.. ffs i don’t want to interact with the guy.. please let me unfollow..
Who cares!
Twitter is more interested in seeing itself race with other social networks to see who stands tall. And they have a strong reason why need to be #1. Did you know? Twitter is now getting on the paths of Profiling you based on your information!
Checkout http://webcoher...-the-bandwagon/
Excellent personal marketing!
Guys… there is something MAJORLY FISHY going on with this!
I subscribed to CNN and Kutcher in the last 2 days to watch the final race. I was following both. Once Kutcher won, I tried to unfollow both of them.
It allows me to unfollow CNNbrk. It will not allow me to unfollow Ashton Kutcher!!!
It says “Whoops! Something went wrong… refresh the page and try again.”
Kutcher’s count is growing much faster than CNN’s now because some people are probably dropping the CNN account, as I did. But Twitter has made it impossible to stop following Kutcher for the moment.
Why? Well, because his followers are all artificial. They are kids trying to win EA games or people interested in following the race, but who don’t give a damn what Ashton Kutcher actually has to say.
If people were allowed to unfollow Kutcher right now, he might very well drop below 1 million followers while he’s out on his media victory lap today.
TechCrunch should do a story on this BS that Twitter is doing.
CNN’s account just went backwards very slightly… and then resumed growing…
Kutcher’s account keeps going strong… now at 1 million 14 thousand.
BUT NO ONE CAN UNFOLLOW HIM!
Is it really true? I’m not a follower of CNN or Kutcher…so, I do not know. Have any one else experienced this?
A lot of these following accounts are astroturfing. This whole scenario is as fake as a professional wrestling (or rap video) feud.
You can determine who is on the Twitterholic.com Top 100 list simply by looking at the 157 users that Twitter suggests its users follow. Except for a few users, they are almost the same list.
But which came first? These Twitterers are popular so Twitter recommended them? Or they became popular after receiving Twitter’s recommendation. I think it’s latter.
Either way, these “top” lists no longer represent tech or social media or even just heavy users of Twitter. Many of these top people don’t even send updates very often. They are just E! Twitter.
For the other 99.99% of users, these celebrities aren’t part of our social network because they only follow each other. There’s limited actual interaction. And isn’t that what a social network is actually supposed to be about?
Watching how celebrities & Internet marketers have changed Twitter in the past five months has really been fascinating to those of us who study social network evolution. But what might be good for Twitter the company–the media attention, the increased number of users–may not be what’s best for its core user base. The jury’s still out.
Why would having more users and celebrities being involved be harmful for “core users”?
Geeks who complain here: SHUT UP and go coding some ridiculous script for your new start-up
CNN and Larry (Who?) “Burry yourself!” for being so arrogant!
Ashton (even if it was a PR campaign or any other marketing approach for Twitter): Congrats!
This shows how today’s media landscape has come to a change and how one person could be as powerful as “a whole network”!
and who are you?
Year 1950
Medium: 400 pages
Average reader IQ: 140
Followers: 100 library card holders
Year 2000
Medium: 1 blog post
Average reader IQ: 110
Followers: 1,000 RSS subscribers
Year 2009
Medium: 140 characters
Average reader IQ: 80
Followers: 1 million tweetheads
Year 2020
Medium: 1 fartbyte
Average IQ: [NULL]
Followers: All of us
I’m afraid, this might happen before 2020
The punishment does not fit the crime!
I just wanted to keep up on the race to a million. Now I am stuck with Ashton Kutcher’s dumbass updates clogging my feed!
Twitter, FIX THIS!
Wow… ok… Twitter listened and suddenly unfollowed Ashton for me.
I keep refreshing his numbers. It seems like they go up 20 or 30 followers, and then all of a sudden they go down by 5-10 followers.
It’s as if Twitter is queing up all the people who said “unfollow” and is allowing them through a few at a time… so long as it’s not so fast that Kutcher loses followers or falls below 1 million.
I figured as soon as Oprah got involved, he’d get his million followers. Good for him and that those nets get to Africa.