officially a tweeter

I just have to jump on the twitter bandwagon. With the force of social media rising so rapidly, it'll be hard to ignore the strength of the up-and-coming twitter. Forget Facebook, people. It's twitter (for now). Add me @realgoldengoose

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) made a bet with CNN (@CNNbrk) a few days ago, challenging the giant news corporation that he will get 1 million followers before CNN does. He faced a mountainous task because he had 842,000 followers while CNN had 921,000 on Monday. Since then, the numbers have gone up up up till just mere minutes ago, Kutcher crossed the line and hit the magical one million mark.

Both sides promised to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to help combat Malaria. Initially Kutcher was simply going to punk CNN founder Ted Turner with the classic "ding, dong, ditch" prank if he wins. I'm personally glad he turned this new elevated platform to serve a good cause. Kutcher also offered his one millionth follower the popular game Guitar Hero (super addictive, I'd say) and this prompted Electronic Arts to jump into the contest and offer the lucky follower a copy of every game it makes in 2009 AND provide him/her a role in the new Sims 3 game. Talk about being immortalized in a videogame!! Ripper.

What does this all mean, anyway? Like Earth Hour, it may seem pointless and almost counter-productive. But by throwing down the gauntlet, Kutcher has showed the world that we, the people, are firmly in control of the Internet. This is the age where we don't need censorship and where we are able to seek information for ourselves, and more often than not, create them. Governments and corporate giants will seek to cover up their hot messes but the truth will always surface. The shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content has already started - and today Kutcher has used this to raise awareness for a deadly disease and help combat it. Bravo!