Twitter Race to 1 Million Followers: Can Kutcher Beat CNN and Spears?

April 16, 2009— -- The race to the one millionth Twitter follower has heated up.

Pop star Britney Spears has decided to throw her hat into the ring, joining actor Ashton Kutcher and the TV network CNN in the battle to be the most popular of the Twitterati.

On Wednesday, Spears' manager, Adam Leber, tweeted on her account, "Let's get Brit across the million mark! Tweet about following @britneyspears for a chance to win 2 tix to Brit's concert."

Earlier this week, actor Ashton Kutcher announced that he will try to beat CNN to reach 1 million followers on the popular social networking site.

Initially, he said that if he succeeds, he will "ding dong ditch" CNN founder Ted Turner's house while shooting his next movie in Atlanta. (In other words, he'll ring the doorbell and run, if he can even get close enough to the door of the mogul's estate.)

But over the past few days, Kutcher and others have upped the ante.

On Tuesday night, the actor of Punk'd fame, and husband of actress Demi Moore, tweeted, "the 1 millionth person gets a guitar hero!" (Presumably referring to the popular video game.)

Later, he added that if he beat CNN to 1 million followers, he would buy 10,000 mosquito bed nets for World Malaria Day April 25.

Not to be outdone, a spokesperson for CNN told ABCNews.com that the company would match Kutcher's offer and will also buy the mosquito beds if it is the first to reach 1 million.

"Rather than trying to out-donate each other, we're trying to make sure that while it's a fun, engaging activity that some good can come out of it," she said.

But until this week, the CNN breaking news Twitter feed was not actually run by the cable news giant.

The spokeswoman confirmed that this week ownership was officially transferred to it from James Cox, a London technologist who started the CNN Twitter account in January 2007.

However, although CNN didn't previously outright own the Twitter account, the spokeswoman said it had been working alongside Cox for the past couple of years.

As for the Twitter race, she said it's a "healthy" challenge that is creating "socially responsible social media."

Since Kutcher kicked off the "race" with a YouTube video Monday, he's upped his subscriber numbers from about 842,000 to more than 950,000. But the cable giant has also managed to boost its numbers from about 921,000 to 965,000.

According to the Twitter directory WeFollow, CNN's breaking news feed is still the most popular account on the micro-blogging site, but Kutcher has significantly narrowed the gap.