Rick Calvert
BlogWorld

I think its much simpler. People want to feel directly to people they once thought as out of reach.

Best,
Rich

I think both Aston Kutcher and CNN cheapened themselves in participating in this race. CNN should have positioned themselves as…”Above the fray.” It does not matter that they wrapped this little escapade well into the guise of charity.

The relevance Aston Kutcher will have after gaining 0Ne million followers in irrelevant. A good percentage of said…Followers..were and are Computer bots. Aston Kutcher and Demi Moore wee advised ahead of the contest that a major part of his Followers were bots. The response from the Kutcher camp was…merely shrugged shoulders…”Oh Well!!”

Kutcher may be riding high thinking he has the power, but people are savvy smart in these Social Media platforms. They will see that Kutcher is nothing more than another pretty face and move on.

Kutcher made the statement .. “I follow you” to the Twitterverse when in truth he only follows 72 people and engages with very few daily. People are not starved to hang on Kutcher’s every word, because it is very evident that he needs a bit of maturing.

The Twiiterverse gave Kutcher the power and then can de-pedestal him any time they choose.

I do not think Kutcher taught the world anything other than how huge his ego is. Celebrating with champagne, his win with thousands of bots is sickening.

The Twitterverse has been had…The reign of power will shift away from the rock-star-celebrity accounts back to the people. Just as we followed you…We can unfollow you and go to friend-feed or another SM app.

This said, it may be the only individuals that can transcend the power (influence) of corporate media are celebrities.

Andrew Keen says that a social media as a platform will create great imbalances of influence. Everyone can join the conversation but a “popular” few will have a disproportionate amount of power.

So as this event signifies a milestone of relevance for social media, it simultaneously signifies the imbalance of power inherent within.

Although I agree that Ashton Kutcher is doing a great thing, his nearly 1,000,000 followers surely are not due (entirely) to meaningful interaction. If one of us humble members of the Twitter proletariat made the same promises, the response would clearly not have the same effect.

IMHO, this particular contest is more driven by celebrity than the power of SM. Of course, the Twitter community certainly reaps the benefits of celebrity attention and the potential for reaching millions — even as a social pauper — is fascinating and even (dare I say it) inspiring.

Although I agree that Ashton Kutcher is doing a great thing, his nearly 1,000,000 followers surely are not due (entirely) to meaningful interaction. If one of us humble members of the Twitter proletariat made the same promises, the response would clearly not have the same effect.

IMHO, this particular contest is more driven by celebrity than the power of SM. Of course, the Twitter community certainly reaps the benefits of celebrity attention and the potential for reaching millions — even as a social pauper — is fascinating and even (dare I say it) inspiring.

*WE* are relevant whether Ashton or CNN or, now, Oprah see us as relevant.

1) What will be the impact (if any) of ‘losing’ the race to 1m followers on CNN? Does this cheapen their brand in any way? Their participation seemed like a cheap publicity stunt, and their actions /comments were fairly reactive to @aplusk’s. They did not have a lot to gain by participating, and through this we found out that they did not own the @cnnbrk Twitter account until a day or two ago. Oh, they also lost — slightly embarrassing, right?

2) Now that @aplusk and @cnnbrk have their 1m followers, what are they going to do with them? This could be the most interesting item to follow coming out of this story, because their actions will define whether this was a race to collect / cajole people, or part of a greater strategy to communicate with this audience in a new way. To your point, can you have intimate and connected conversations with a group of people the size of a small country? Clearly, you can. Can you sustain them, though? Not sure. Attention is easy to get and just as easy to lose 140 characters at a time.

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