Twitter Battle for the Most Followers: Ashton Kutcher vs CNN

There is a Battle Royale happening on Twitter to see who will reach 1 million followers on the fast-growing social network first. TV and film star, Ashton Kutcher, has challenged CNN that he will reach the milestone before they do. This challenge is filled with trash talking, videos, and even impersonations. Here’s a CNN article with details, and it continues to be updated. According to Marin Purgar, an information technology consultant in Croatia, Kutcher will beat CNN to the 1 million follower mark before 4pm ET on Thursday, while the network’s news feed won’t reach that point until 1pm ET on Friday.

Tally as of Wednesday, April 15, 2009 per Twitterholic:
CNN: 923,624
Ashton Kutcher: 921,871

Many on Twitter are talking about this, but yesterday it was not the most talked about topic on the service. It is number five now at 8am ET, and I am sure it will rise over the course of the day. Many in the Twittersphere don’t care about number of followers themselves, but are interested in the drama of the race. There is a big upside to Twitter, as the media hype surrounding it will only continue to expand over the next couple of days. This brings more users to the service everyday, and their explosive growth of the past few months will continue. What does it mean to users of the service? Does greater adoption of Twitter lead to better engagement, better conversations and stronger networks? Let me know you thoughts in the comments.

And one final note, the CNN story was updated since yesterday and now reveals that the CNN Breaking News feed on Twitter, the account currently with the most followers, was not even started by CNN, however, they just purchased it from the man who wanted CNN updates on his mobile phone.