Social Media - how many can you reach?

Recently actor Ashton Kutcher decided to 'challenge' CNN in a 'top the million followers' contest were he bet he would reach the 1 million TWITTER followers mark before CNN did (at the time, CNN held the highest 'Followers' rank). Read CNN coverage

Actually, it is said no single Twitter account had previously reached 1 million followers on Twitter, a site on which users post 140-character messages that are displayed to groups of followers.

Well, he said it and he did it. He got to 1 million around 30 minutes before CNN did! "This is [a battle between] David vs Goliath", as he puts it, and it seems 'David' is a snazzy guy who went all out and won!

However, what is the actual point to this? What is the lesson learned? I would say the influence of mainstream social media where one person can be heard as loud as a media network/source?

Some state that Kutcher's popularity was due to his usage of Twitter to actually interact with his followers, whilst CNN simply 'delivers the news'. This raises many questions though regarding the needs, use and influence of mainstream media and what people look for today...only information or actual interaction?

Read a post about the Ashton Kutcher/CNN Battle as well as CNN's 'promotion' of Twitter.

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