Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN: Twitter Race to 1M Followers

April 14, 2009— -- The race is on in Twitterland, where actor Ashton Kutcher has announced that he will try to beat CNN to reach 1 million followers on the popular social networking site.

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

With about 921,451 followers, the cable news giant's breaking news feed is the most popular one on the micro-blogging site. But the Twitterific actor isn't too far behind.

According to the Twitter directory WeFollow, Kutcher is #3 on the site, behind only CNN and pop star Britney Spears. As of midday Tuesday, his Twitter page said he had 858,660 followers.

But, with the help of his followers and fans, some think it's possible that Kutcher could overtake CNN and hit 1 million followers in the next week.

Turner, who is currently out of the country, couldn't be reached for comment. Calls to Kutcher's spokespeople weren't immediately returned.

Kutcher: Number of Twitter Followers Is 'Crazy'

Yesterday, the actor of Punk'd fame and husband of actress Demi Moore, posted a video to YouTube expressing his astonishment that he'd attracted hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers.

"I just realized I have … 842,550 people that are following my Twitter feed which is kind of scary to me now," he said. "Like I didn't realize that there were that many people following. That's kind of crazy."

Putting it in perspective for his fellow "citizens of the Inter Web," he added that CNN only had about 50,000 more followers than he does.

Amused by this distinction, he said, "If I beat CNN to 1 million followers I will literally go and ding dong ditch ted Turner's house while I'm in Atlanta." (Kutcher will soon film "Five Killers" in the city, with Katherine Heigl and Tom Selleck.)

Before the actor signed off from his YouTube missive, he had some words for his acolytes: "To everyone who is following me on Twitter, you guys are awesome and I just really enjoy the conversation we can have every day."

It didn't take long for his fans to respond with similar appreciation.

'Ding Dong Dash 2009'

Soon after Kutcher posted his YouTube link to his Twitter feed, the Twittersphere was abuzz with his new challenge. His followers started re-tweeting his post and asking others to join the campaign.

"SwissCow86" wrote: "U should ask ur followers to remove CNN from their "Following" :)"

"LaurenDayMakeup"called it the "Ding Dong Dash 2009."

"1 Million Followers Campaign Everyone PLEASE FOLLOW him! 855,472 so far! please retweet," she wrote.

And, Don Dodge, a Microsoft employee and tech blogger recently wrote that he thinks Kutcher might go down in Internet history as the first individual Twitter user to hit 1 million followers.

When he first wrote about celebs on Twitter in early April, Kutcher had 521,469 followers. But in just two weeks, he surpassed 753,000.

"He'll certainly be the first individual to reach a million followers. He may even beat CNN," Dodge told ABCNews.com.

He calculated that Kutcher is adding about 15,000 followers every day and expects him to have a million followers by April 21.

CNN, it's time to rev your engines.