Really, it’s all just a big popularity contest. Ashton Kutcher is well on his way to becoming the Tila Tequila of Twitterspace, thanks to his obsessive use of the medium and his habit of posting pictures of his wife’s ass. Right now, Ashton has more than 888,000 Twitter followers, led only by Britney Spears (903,000) and CNN’s breaking news feed (937,000). Now Ashton feels that success is within his grasp, and he’s planning to drive right over CNN (to say nothing of that hapless Spears bimbo) and become the first Twitterer with a million-follower army. Larry King had strong views on the subject, and smacked the upstart down in no uncertain terms:
Are you kidding? Do you think you can take on an entire network? Do you know how big we are? Do you know what CNN is? Kutcher, you’re playing out of your field. You’re in another time zone. This ain’t gonna work. CNN will bury you!”
King’s outrage seems a little peculiar, considering that he’s probably never even heard of Twitter. Larry King was probably some sort of online demon back in the days when they were laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable, but the last time I looked he thought the internet was something you “tuned into,” no doubt by twiddling dials or something. For his part, Kutcher has promised that if he beats CNN to the million mark, he’ll do a “ding-dong-ditch” at Ted Turner’s house and record the event on video. Does anyone else feel like the whole damn planet has been sent back to high school?
2 comments
Totally OT
How is it possible that you don’t have an A-List Awards thread underway?
The impossible just happened; I laughed at Tori Spelling’s humor, and not at Tori Spelling herself.
You should be recording this for posterity.
ASHTON WON!!! ASHTON WON!!! ASHTON WON!!!
But what is the meaning of this victory to the marketing world? What did it prove?
In a single word, Transformation. This was the defining moment of how the internet won over the Television. It is, as Ashton said, “A changing of the guard…from the old way of consuming media to the new way of consuming media.” Not only did CNN have the advantage of having continuous air coverage, but they had not one, not two, not three, not four, but over five nationally, and in fact, internationally recognized faces and names plugging their Twitter account. And yet Ashton still won.
So, how is this transforming? As Ashton said “The new wave is here…We get to choose what we want to see and don’t want to see and who we want to have broadcast.” It no longer resides with the big companies, “the Giants” forcing you to watch endless commercials, listening to their points of view, or buying into their ideology. But the power now rest firmly in the hands of the consumer. This simple competition has put forth what we should already know. Consumers, People, are going to the web for their entertainment, for their personal growth, and for fulfilling their lives. We now have, more than ever in the history of mankind, the ability to connect across all boundaries, across all oceans, and right through the middle of any misunderstandings that our governments have with each other. We have the power to determine what we watch, what we let into our lives, and with a simple click, close off what we don’t like. No longer are our lives dominated by mass media force feeding us what they want us to hear or what they think we should hear.
It’s remarkable that a multinational news and cable organization would compete with a single man and lose. It’s ironic that they would tell their viewers to go to the web. The very medium which will one day replace watching CNN on the television.
The masses have spoken. The dice have been cast. The internet is the ultimate victor here. “Victory is ours!!!!”
Will the marketing world wake up? Will they see that the consumers they are spending millions trying to reach on the television are not even there any more? I don’t know. Perhaps if they are visionaries they will. But if they stand steadfast in their resolve that television will continue to be their best channel, then they will go out the same way that the newspapers and print media are today…a slow and agonizing death.
Congratulations Ashton and thank you for your efforts to rid the world of Malaria. Thank you also for the clarity of this message: the world has truly gone to the web.