Up until this point, despite all the press he was getting, Ashton Kutcher was behind CNN in the race to become the first Twitter user with a million followers. Not anymore.
Kutcher surged past CNN on Thursday evening, likely clearing the last hurdle that stands between him and Ted Turner’s doorstep — he promised to ding dong ditch the CNN founder if he was the first to a million followers. Since then, Kutcher and others have upped the stakes. EA is offering Kutcher’s millionth follower a copy of every single game it makes in 2009 and a role in its Sims 3 game. And now Kutcher is offering to buy 10,000 bed nets to help stop the spread of malaria in Africa if he wins. CNN has also pledged to buy bed nets, win or lose.
But the stage is set for Kutcher to hit the mark first. With over 980,000 followers currently, he’s appearing tomorrow on Oprah to talk about Twitter along with the service’s CEO Evan Williams. And Oprah, who just secured her Twitter account today, has promised that she will send her first tweet tomorrow during the show.
Kutcher’s late surge to take the lead in Twitter followers has been pretty amazing. Today alone, he’s added tens of thousands of followers. This helped him overcome odds that were in CNN’s favor. The site Bookmaker.com said it had received thousands of bets on the race and favored CNN’s account to get there first at -500, with Kutcher at even money.
But one oddity in this whole thing is that apparently you can’t unfollow either Kutcher or CNN on Twitter right now! Go ahead, try it, you’ll get a nice error message saying something went wrong. Is Twitter trying to ensure Kutcher gets to a million in time for Oprah tomorrow? Tin foil hat time!
Update: Actually, as MobileCrunch’s Greg Kumparak just shared with me, you probably can’t unfollow either so that you can’t game Kutcher and EA’s millionth follower giveaway. So I hope you like your Ashton and CNN updates!
Another oddity is that some people are seeing follower counts go way up for certain users. The CNN account is one of them, see the screenshot below. (Though I still see the correct amount.) Twitter, it appears, is having some issues leading up to the breaking of the 1 million barrier.
Here’s the video Kutcher recorded on Ustream about the milestone. Notably, Kutcher says he’s going to start following more people.
“We need Billy Crystal to Analyze This” – Dan Rather.
While I found the impression funny, I couldn’t help how strange it was that here we are celebrating a landmark for new media, and the first thing that comes to his mind is old media. :p
Someone must tell Kutcher and Oprah about freerice.com. It’s just too awesome a possibility to ignore – you make a site where Kutcher and Oprah and many others of their stature play a game everyday that feeds hungry kids in Africa and poor tropical countries – and they challenge you to beat them. Just imagine if 1 million people play Freerice everyday. Hunger will be finished.
Way to go, the two of you!
(Disclaimer: freerice is a non-profit. I am nobody about it. They don’t know me either)
I doubt there is any conspiracy, just twitter struggling to cope with the volume.
Interesting to see if there are a lot of glitches tomorrow.
Could be that or check the update above. It makes sense that Twitter doesn’t want people following and unfollowing to try and game Kutcher’s prize giveaway.
its working now.
Of course you can’t remove Ashton – I’m sure people would have been adding/removing him constantly trying to be that 1 millionth person to follow.
Which, btw, is a weird way to do the contest – you reward the person who signs up last? Most contests like this I’ve seen randomly pick one person out of ALL followers.
Yep, that’s probably it Stephanie, and yes that is kind of a weird way to run a contest.
This is the same thing Apple did – rewarding the person who bought song # 1 billion on itunes.
Very true Stephanie!
Yeahhhh I was all about Kutcher in an interview a while ago, turns out i was right!
Pretty simple. You can’t unfollow to prevent people from trying to be the one millionth follower.
Tonight or tomorrow, both will have a huge surge of follows jumping from 990,000 straight into 1,010,000.
Twitter may have a hard time proving that someone was the millionth. Cutting off unfollow was the correct first step. Good catch for the Twitter team.
Just tried it.
Windows, Chrome. Got an error message the first unfollow attempt. Second succeeded.
Then refollowed to be in on the fun
Interesting…
Leave it to Twitter to ruin this at the last minute.
Ruin what? It’s a cute little publicity thing that is actually doing some good…a foundation for malaria nets is getting supported…and someone gets their mug on an EA game. Fun, man. Remember that?
If Kutcher doesn’t own a piece of Twitter yet, he definitely should by Monday. They owe it to him.
This is one of the greatest (free) marketing campaigns in history.
People are actually following this. It’s like the US Presidential election… except that more people are paying attention.
LOL. Re: “It’s like the US Presidential election… except that more people are paying attention.”
i was pulling for the 4chan to pull the upset and neither of cnn or kutcher wins.
i’m not sure this is such a good idea. millions of people flocking to Twitter all at the same time is like putting a 1000 pound gorilla on a cardboard box.
Seriously? Are we gonna have a new post about every new follower that Kutcher or CNN gets?? So tired of this… Yeah yeah I know: if I’m tired of it, I don’t have to read it…
So tomorrow we will consistently see the Fail Whale due to Oprah fans signing up for Twitter.
And I still don’t get how a celebrity is allowed to amass such an out of balance ratio of who they follow and who is following them, yet everyday people like us get capped at 2000 and then have to maintain a balance thereafter.
ashton is following 73 people
cnn is following 6.
the 2000 person cap is for who you follow, not who follows you.
Actually, there is a cap.
To follow more than 2000
people,
1800 have to be following you.
I ran across this issue lots of times.
Shannon,
If you don’t care to read the Tweets of those following you (as is the case with celebs with low following counts) then you can always get to the 2,000 mark and unfollow EVERYONE.
90% of them won’t notice that you did so and you can go round up another 2,000 if you want.
I was watching on ustream him go past CNN. I think it’s cool to see twitter get so much attention. But I wonder how it will change now that everyone seems to be jumping on board. Will they forget about us tech folks? go twitter! @robblewis
I was also having unfollowing problems a few hours ago. However, after trying a few more times, it eventually worked.
and whats about lucytivi?
first million here we come!
In all of this, noone seems to have noticed that @cnnbrk has gone downhill for breaking news since CNN bought it from the individual who did such a good job of it.
1 post in 5 days? Nothing must be happening in the world this week…
I’m pretty sure stuff only goes on @cnnbrk when there is a “Breaking News” headline on CNN – hence the lack of updates. Last week was quite eventful, with North Korea launching a rocket and the pirates attacking.
one of the times when I refreshed @aplusk it said he had 1,998,045 followers…. weird, i’m kicking myself for not taking a screenshot
We have one in the post (for CNN)
i think i’m about done with this story.
Michael you should have been in this dude… leveraging the power of TC to get a million
But it’s not done with you!
Ashtons a real cool dude, man. I used to not care for him, but he took interest in our company and decided to invest a little in us, since then he’s just been really cool and proactive… @saysmeteam
good!!!!
seem like the winner will be the best auto bot
the whole contest is ghey.
Totally boring. An overpaid celeb has tons of fanboys following him on Twitter. Just in: the fanboys lurvs their leader Ashton.
Yeah, that is breakthrough tech news you can use.
Not to be a fanboi, but I think this story is amazing and I love you guys for following it
It makes sense to disable the ability to stop following them to decrease fraud attempts. I am sure they will put the feature back live once the 1 million follower is securely labeled.
I ended up snatching a Screenshot of Kutchers Follower count when it glitched to almost 3 million..check it out
http://img12.im.../310/ashlhh.jpg
yea what is up with that?
you CAN unfollow even tho you get the error it still unfollows you
Same here, showed nearly 3 million visiters, screen cap here: http://ping.fm/p/TGuuI
9:38pm est… the official time kutcher passed cnn
This chart works great
http://www.huff...i_n_187835.html
i’m noticing that most if his new followers don’t have a picture yet in their twitter profile… these are probably brand new signups who haven’t figured it out yet… twitter’s founders are probably getting wasted right now…
That’s a friendly competition where everyone wins. Twitter is getting a lot more press coverage then myspace and facebook did. Who would’ve thought something so simple would grow to be what its turning into.
CNN is really dropping the ball on tweets, they could be cashing in on pageviews from all this traffic… instead their latest post was 22 hours ago? They should have given this account to larry king… at least he’s into it..
Have you see CNN latest news they have a link to their tweeter account. Front page on CNN.com
It is great, all the plublicity this is bringing and all the new people to Twitter.
If U want to know “How To Use Twitter” Video watch this:http://youtube.com/watch?v=vV32Dav0ktk
If u like this, make a post saying: @APlusk I Nominate @Mike_Wesely for #PTA because I Like his Videos.
The #PTA (Platinum Twitter Award) is part of Ashtons Plan to get 1 Mil. He will be awarding this to the winner.
Thanks a bunch
The Video Link is http://www.yout...h?v=vV32Dav0ktk
Thanks
I unfollowed him…..the writer of this doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Great Reality Video. maybe this will change the way popular artists communicate with their audience. thanks for pushing the envelope AK.
RealityLocator.com – share yourself
This is guaranteed money for anybody betting!
All the blackhats had to do is teamup and looks like they took the case of ashtons side to double there money.
A bunch of blackhatters have software out there that can make hudreads if not thousands of accounts in minutes and follow who they want. This can be easily manipulated so easy.
If your betting big money, cash in on ash
What about blocking? Would imagine one could still block someone.
Rome is fully ablaze. Let’s hope the insects do a better job.
How are we going to know who the millionth person is? Is Twitter going to confirm it. Both of them have so many people adding them both continuously that I think it would be hard to do it manually by looking at the follow list. Any ideas, I’m a twitter newbie.
Ashton needs to wake up and start following people back in the final stretch if he wants to beat CNN!
love u demi…
ashton ur doing a great job…but demis photograph helped u man.. w a t c h c e l e b r i t y . c o m
CNN ahead again….. and it only took them 30minutes to gain 250 followers more then Ashton……. CNN will win and they have to thank their website link…….
Very entertaining and very close.
990,137 v 990,133
Message to Blog owner: You CAN remove them from your updates! If you keep pressing enter!
Wanted to share my screenshot of the stats, right after @aplusk gained: http://bit.ly/hIZMT
I don’t get it, CNN even posted 1 post in the last few days. Why is anyone following them at all then?
My thoughts exactly. It looks as if CNN intentionally dropped the ball to let Kutcher win.
Its going to be an empty win for him if he wins since CNN already has thrown in the towel while CNN was waaaaay ahead.
Twitter has quit working????????
@Rehuel – That info. is already outdated! There’s already a difference of 400 people
“We are the media.” Very nice!
Cheque’s in the mail huh?
Comic:
http://bit.ly/1gBAP