Alright, don't laugh too hard or flame me, but this diary is about two things that many in this community may not be particularly fond of: Ashton Kutcher and Twitter.
But regardless of what you may think about either, Kutcher pulled off a rather significant feat on Twitter: he beat the traditional media establishment, while at the same time providing a significant boost for a good cause.
This is what started as a rather innocuous challenge over the number of users following the Twitter updates. An account that had been created to track CNN's Breaking news, @cnnbrk was the account with the most followers, but Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) challenged CNN to a Twitter battle, declaring that he could get one million followers before CNN did.
And while this was admittedly an exercise in some narcissism, it still involved a good cause. Kutcher promised to donate $100,000 to Stop Malaria Now, an organization dedicated to distributing enough mosquito nets to help completely eradicate malaria. Kutcher also asked people following him to donate to the cause.
Kutcher challenged CNN to the race with a Web video posted on Tuesday. If he wins, Kutcher says he will "ding-dong ditch" CNN founder Ted Turner's house.
"I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter," Kutcher says in a video, which was shot from inside a car and was posted on Qik.com.
And that's the significant part of this, I think. Not that Ashton Kutcher is any particularly prolific voice of my generation or anything. Not even that Twitter will "change everything" (in fact, Kutcher got 1M people to follow him on Facebook before Twitter.)
But the point is that you don't have to be part of a media conglomerate to get your word out to many many people, particularly in the age of blogging and the democratization of information. Of course, here I'm preaching to the choir, but it was a point salient enough to make CNN take it very seriously, seriously enough to feel threatened. In fact, tonight, as the race came down to the wire, a number of CNN anchors starting pleading for people to sign up and follow CNN's Twitter accounts. As it looked like they might lose, they even offered their millionth follower an interview with Larry King.
And for awhile it looked like CNN would win based on its rather heavy-handed promotion.
That's when Kutcher responded by starting an online webcam session, complete with his wife Demi Moore. He pointed out a couple times that he didn't have to cut to commercial like CNN.
After awhile of this, he regained the lead, and ultimately crossed the finish line first.
And yet another blow against monolithic exclusive media domination. It took the form of Ashton Kutcher, and it happened on Twitter, but it happened nonetheless. Sometimes good things take strange shapes. :)