Ashton Kutcher Gets Social Media — Do You?

Theresa Smith — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:23:50 +0000

By now– unless you have been living under a rock for the last week without any Internet connection and have taken an oath against listening to any news—you have heard about how Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to see who could get to one million followers first on Twitter. Kutcher won. But maybe his challenge means we all won.

On Friday, April 17, 2009 after winning his challenge, Kutcher told Oprah that he believes that “We’re at a place now with social media where a single person’s voice can be as powerful as an entire news network — that is the power of the social web.”

He went on to say that as a celebrity his life “somewhat on display anyway, and not always by choice… so instead of them publishing pictures and videos I don’t like, I can publish pictures and video of myself… that I’m happy with. If there’s some sort of fallacy that’s out in some magazine or that some blogger has written about, you can respond to it, and you can actually respond to it in a genuine way, directly with your fans.”

In an article for The Huffington Post titled “Changing the Face of Media: Kutcher vs CNN” Andrew Cherwenka, vice president of business development at trapeze.com wrote:

Kutcher gets new media. His livecast during the race – a continuous live video stream over the internet – was an engaged conversation. He read followers’ tweets on air, asked questions, and actively engaged his audience using Twitter. He linked us to YouTube clips and his chosen charity, www.malarianomore.org. He advanced his next cause, fighting human trafficking.

At the end of the day, Kutcher has been able to raise almost one million dollars for Malaria No More and maybe he also showed the power of social media to the non-believers out there. What do you think?

Ashton Kutcher – Pathway Communications

Ashton Kutcher Gets Social Media — Do You?