Ashton Kutcher vs CNN: A Race to A Million Twitter Followers

A couple of days ago, actor Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to a race to a million Twitter followers and promised to "ding dong ditch" billionaire Ted Turner (founder of CNN) if he beats CNN to the landmark number. Videos from Ashton Kutcher, Larry King and more after the jump.



Below, anchor Larry King got involved and responded to the challenge Kutcher laid out saying that one man couldn't take down a whole network. Larry King also noted that while Ted Turner did started CNN, he no longer runs the cable network. But Kutcher wanted to punk him, so now he's apparently involved whether he wants to or not.



Then Kutcher upped the ante with an offer to buy 10,000 bed nets to fight malaria in Africa. Yes, the whole thing is silly but at least it's for a good cause. Then Electronic Arts stepped into the fight and offered to put Kutcher's 1 millionth follower in its Sims 3 game, and a copy of every game it make in 2009.

What's also interesting about all this is that the cnnbrk account that Kutcher is racing against wasn't even maintained by CNN until James Cox (the person who created the account) confirmed that he has sold the CNNBrk Twitter account to CNN for an undisclosed sum.

Also during the interview (embedded below), Turner's daughter, Laura Turner Seydel said on a radio show that if Ashton Kutcher donates 10,000 nets, she will ask her father to personally endorse Ashton in his quest for a million followers. However, CNN also said that it will match Kutcher's net pledge if it wins the race and still donate 1,000 nets if it loses.



And here's a video statement from Kutcher giving an update on the race two days ago. Lil Kim also joins the twitter challenge with a shout out to Ashton Kutcher and check out the campaign in front of CNN building.







As of this writing, Ashton Kutcher leads the race with 988,068 followers and CNN closely left behind with 987,733. Chartbeat has a real-time count of twitter followers for both CNN and Ashton Kutcher on its site.

UPDATE: Ashton Kutcher won around 2:13PM today (GMT + 0800) and is now the first man with a million Twitter followers. Kutcher will also be donating 10,000 bed nets to fight malaria in Africa.