Hey congrats on beating CNN on reaching 1 million followers on Twitter. I just wish you didn’t pull that stunt though.
Look, at the end of the day, what’s this about? This is about the changing of the guard, from the old way of consuming media to the new way of consuming media.
Sorry dude. It already happened. It’s called the Internet.
We together, can decide, we can make the news on our cell phones, on our iPhones, on our cameras, on our video cameras. We can edit the news, we can broadcast the news, and we can consume the news. We can decide what news we want to hear, how we want to hear it, when we want to hear it. And we can get it faster on the web. That’s all we’re saying.
Again, the 90s called – it wants its paradigm shift back.
And it’s not about me, it’s not about anything, any accolade I’m trying to achieve.
No! Really? Is that why you went into acting? Actors don’t like the attention? Is that why you continue to leverage your fame from playing a dumb jock on the 70s Show & a moron on Dude Where’s My Car into producing shows like Punk’d and the ’social experiment’ Beauty & the Geek? It had nothing to do with promoting your web production company? It had nothing to do with the need to be constantly in the public eye and the media? And you know…being an actor?
It’s really about us and, uh, it’s about a statement that one man can have a voice that’s as loud as an entire media company. And you can have that voice as well.
…as long as you’re a Hollywood actor and married to a beautiful Hollywood actress.
And we can all have that voice together. And, and, and we can change media forever. That’s just the start. I dunno, um, maybe that was a little too preachy?
And how exactly are you going to help us with that? Retweet everything people address to you. So instead of a media company filtering through the news, you’d get to do that?
While I appreciate your 100k donation to help stop malaria (sincerely I do), you could’ve done that earlier on and not held the donation hostage if you reached 1 million followers. It was like saying “I’ll kill this puppy if I don’t reach 1M followers.” Or you could have promised to donate a dollar for every follower you get at a certain date, whether or not you reached 1 million followers. Disguising your drive to 1M as some charity stunt to prove you can do better than CNN was, in the end, purely for your ego.
Sure people called your PR exercise fun. I think it would’ve been more fun if you promised to shave your eyebrows or something if you reached 1M. I’d be in on that. Now that would’ve been fun. What you did succeed in doing is placing the focus on the wrong aspect of Twitter. Now every celeb would think ‘hey I’m more popular than Ashton, I could totally go beyond 1M.’ You’ll be lying if you say you’ll be reading each and every post from your 1M followers – just not physically possible.
Twitter’s value to me has always been the information shared from each contact. What you did succeed in doing is putting old media Hollywood thinking into Twitter, ie the bigger the audience you have, the better. The few quality posts/Tweets from people who share my same interests has bigger value to me than having xxx,xxx,xxx of followers. If what you have to say is interesting enough, people will repost it for you. Also, I can only imagine how many fake accounts were made to contribute to your win. Already a web community notorious for gaming web polls wants to top your 1M followers. So yeah thanks for the spam accounts.
But there is also one other thing I can thank you for doing – we at least know Twitter can handle a million followers on one account. Now Twitter’s figuring out how to handle all those people trying to unfollow you all at the same time. Thanks for the stress test.
I wished you stayed off my Internet, Kelso. Enjoy the backlash and the nerd rage.
Inspired by the snark found here:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/04/kutcher_twitter.html
A baby girl will be born during the early days of the Barack Obama Administration. In the next 4 years, as she learns to crawl, walk and talk, her mother and father will be watching the news and reading about Obama’s successes and failures.