Ashton Kutcher @aplusk on twitter was the first user on twitter to break the 1 million twitter followers today. Some would call him a twillionaire. I just call him good at understanding the technology.

There were 2 major things that went right for him:

Cause

He had a cause. He said that if he was first to 1 million followers, he would donate money to Malaria No More:

http://www.malarianomore.org/

Competitor

He had a competitor! CNN Breaking News – @cnnbrk – had managed to get a large following, and Ashton Kutcher made it a race between the two of them. The race was very close too:

Kutcher v CNN

Why Is This Important?

It shows the power of celebrity to endorse a charity. The interesting thing is that some people followed him because it was a race with CNN, and others followed him because it was for charity. There were in fact 3 winners though, CNN, Ashton himself and the charity who received the money.

Celebrity endorsements are great, but the real key is the size and speed with which the following was formed. Twitter has the ability to bring in real traffic for a real cause with real speed.

The Perfect Storm

However, it was a perfect storm. The conditions were right and the opportunity presented itself. I’m not sure if anyone could have strategised this because it was not engineered, but however it came about, this was a brilliantly executed social media campaign.

However, ongoing, this is not a particularly great conversation. It’s very much about getting 1 million followers, and that’s it. The thing about twitter is you don’t have to care about your followers particularly, they just follow you. TechCrunch took a similar view in that they see twitter being overtaken by celebrity.

So, now this is all over, will it actually matter?

Well, for the people who will receive a malaria net it will. And actually, for me, that’s all that matters.

Followership on Twitter

For a sarcastic take on this episode see 10 tips to increase your follower count which highlights some of the more amusing aspects of followership on twitter.