Did you follow the Ashton Kutcher-CNN Twitter challenge last week?
Upon realizing that his 953,268 Twitter followers were almost as many followers as CNN had at 966,363, celebrity Ashton Kutcher threw down a challenge to CNN. He proclaimed that he could reach 1 million Twitter followers before they did.
Kutcher won … and remarkably it only took about 12 hours for Kutcher to hit 1 million followers in a battle he called, “the people vs. the establishment.” Afterwards he said, “I think it’s a huge statement about social media for one person to actually have the ability to broadcast to as many people as a major media network.”
We think it is huge too, as well as exciting and even a little scary.
Social Media Marketing as a Tool for Rebuilding
And Twitter is back in the news this week, (although it seems they are never really out of it) as Twitter and WordPress executives travel to Iraq to help leaders there learn to use social media marketing and communication tools in their postwar rebuilding efforts. According to CNN, the US State Department-led trip has brought the social media marketing experts to Iraq in order to help them, “build upon anti-corruption efforts, promote critical thinking in the classroom, and scale-up civil society.”
You can gain more insights on the expedition from Raanan Bar-Cohen, (founder of WordPress and other successful social media tools) who is posting about the group’s experiences in Iraq on his website: raanan.com
Another interesting link for you to follow is this post on Mashable.com: Finding the Right Brand Voice on Twitter.
And just in case you have the urge to become a follower of Ashton Kutcher, his Twitter handle is @aplusk.
