Ashton to CNN… My Kutcher is Bigger Than Your Kutcher

Twitter has experienced massive growth in the past year, with the number of people signing up each month accelerating. It has also become the media darling of the day. It seems that everyone is Twittering.

However, with only 10-12 million people on the site, its clear that everyone is NOT Twittering.

Don\’t fret. They will be soon.

So where is the media paying the most attention to Twitter?

You guessed it. It\’s all about the celebrities.

Shaquille O\’Neal can\’t spell, but he loves to tweet. He challenges people to find him when he tweets about giving away free tickets to a game.

Jimmy Fallon turns a regular Joe (Bryan Brinkman\”) into a Twitter celebrity when he calls on all his followers to follow him.

And the list of celebrities on Twitter goes on.

Britney Spears, Ellen DeGenres, John Mayer, Lance Armstrong, Ryan Seacrest, MC Hammer and many more have quickly become the Twitter Elite. Most of these are fully embracing the Twitter culture by interacting with their fans on a regular basis.

And of course, there is Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, who recently brought their across-the-room tweets to the general public. Both are receiving massive media attention, especially due to Kutcher\’s most recent stunt.

Essentially, Kutcher put out a video stating that he wanted to beat CNN\’s Breaking News Twitter account to one million followers.

CNN has been at the #1 position on Twitter since the election and Kutcher is gaining quite rapidly.

You can read more about the details of the story on Mashable.com.

I\’m more interested in how Kutcher and CNN are using Twitter, and why I think Kutcher is more relevant than CNN.

Let\’s take a look at both accounts.

On the left (yes, that is supposed to be a pun. Deal with it…) is CNN Breaking News.

This Twitter stream is exactly what you would expect… breaking news.

There\’s no conversation. There\’s no interaction. There\’s no dialogue. There\’s no relationship.

Is there even a person behind the CNN account? If there is, they don\’t want you to know. They don\’t WANT you to interact with them. They just want you to read the news as they choose to deliver it.

On the other hand, let\’s look at Ashton Kutcher\’s Twitter stream.

True to Twitter culture, Ashton is actually interacting with other people. He\’s engaging in dialogue. He is communicating with his fans in a down-to-earth way that communicates he gets it. And he cares.

I would like to see him following more people, but that\’s a matter of personal preference.

Like the email newsletters that clutter your inbox due to their impersonal one-way communication and end up in your trash folder, I predict that the CNN news feed will become less relevant as time goes on.

After all, isn\’t Twitter made up of over TEN MILLION citizen journalists who are always on the scene and able to report breaking news before CNN has a clue what is taking place?

Wasn\’t the Mumbai terrorist attack and the Continental plane accident in Denver proof that we the people have the potential to report breaking news far quicker (and sometimes more reliably) than CNN or any mainstream news establishment?

The bottom line is that Ashton Kutcher is demonstrating the real power of Twitter to build relationships and enhance branding. CNN\’s attempt to bring old media ways to the new media are stale and boring.

Ashton, I\’m behind ya bubba. Whether you get to one million before CNN or not really isn\’t relevant, because YOU are relevant.

Oh, and one more thing. If you are reading this Ashton, I\’m happy to send you a signed copy of Twitter Power. Just shoot me a tweet and I\’ll take care of it.

Follow me on Twitter at @joelcomm