Ashton Kutcher
In this episode of the iGary TV podcast I take a look at what’s happened on Twitter this week. A few weeks ago the words ‘a plus k’ wouldn’t have meant much, but since Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), of 70’s Show and Dude Where’s my Car fame decided to race CNN (@cnnbrk) to be the first on Twitter with 1 million followers everyone is aware of it.
So, the story so far, Ashton decided he wanted to beat CNN to 1 million followers on Twitter and pledged $100,000 to a charity if he did. Low and behold he did win the race.
Ashton Kutcher hits 1 Million Followers on Twitter
But, there’s been a backlash, or should I say #backlashton which is the search tag being used by people upset by the whole thing on Twitter.
#backlashton
Some have accused Ashton and CNN of gaming the system as Ashton had over 1,000 billboards given free to help him.
Ashton Kutcher @aplusk Billboard
Using mass media to collect followers on Twitter isn’t what social media is about, it’s all a bit retro, social media is about building an audience, engaging them, building trust and joining the conversation. Personally I don’t see too much wrong with what they did, but I don’t think it’s best practice, I wouldn’t like to see big brands following this example and Twitter could have acted better by allowing people to unfollow Ashton and CNN, instead there was a mysterious error.
How to Unfollow Ashton Kutcher
The great thing to come out of this is that Oprah (@oprah) is now on Twitter.
Oprah on Twitter
Oprah has made 10 Tweets and has over 300,000 followers, not bad for the first day!
With Oprah now using Twitter it could change the demographic profile of Twitter, which currently stands like this.
Quantcast Audience Profile Twitter
It could swing the age/gender profile more towards certain brands.
More importantly it could influence the Technographic profile of users, especially in the USA and UK, creating critics and creators out of spectators and inactives.
Technographics
By getting people involved as critics and creators means they are more likely to do the same elsewhere and as evangelists come from these groups this can help your brand.
Data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2008. For further details on the Social Technographics profile, see groundswell.forrester.com