Often called the “Sms of the Internet”, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets.
Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them.
CNN’s breaking news feed has long been the leader among Twitter followers. In early April, Kutcher issued a challenge to media mogul Ted Turner claiming that he would “ding-dong-ditch" the CNN by beating the organization to one million twitter.com followers before the end of April.
As per the rules of the challenge, Aston would donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day on April 25.
CNN maintains more than 40 official Twitter accounts, with a total of more than 1.5 million followers. Kutcher was racing the network's breaking-news feed, @cnnbrk. For a long time, Kutcher was right at the tail of CNN but a rally that he held recently caught attention on the Web, raising the number of his followers on Twitter exponentially.
Talking in the tone of a revolutionary, the 31-year-old actor, after crossing the benchmark on Friday, said, "We have shown the world that the new wave is here. It is present and it is ready to explode. You guys are all of it because I can't follow me."
Web sites that track popularity of Twitter state that no single twitter account had previously reached one million followers. The event not only marks the huge upswing of Twitter's popularity but also the relevance of a single voice in the dynamic world of media.
Web junkies watched Kutcher on a live video stream as he celebrated with champagne, surrounded by his wife Demi Moore and friends. "We can and will create our media," he states while his post on Twitter says: "Victory is ours!"
Around the same time, Oprah Winfrey made her entry to Twitter, joining the site and holding a Twitter special on her show Friday with Kutcher as a guest. Winfrey drew more than 73,000 Twitter followers before she sent out her first tweet at 10:10 a.m. EST, which was in all caps and said, "HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY.”
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