Where do I start this one? I am going to keep this simple and try to make my point.
Ashton Kutcher made a one sided bet with CNN’s Ted Tuner to see who going to get to 1 million followers first on Twitter. It started out cute and funny but got out of hand with all the media attention it drew.
The Advertising Age posted this. Lamar Advertising, the third-largest billboard company in the U.S., got all Twitterpated yesterday when it rolled out “Follow Ashton Kutcher” across its national network of 1,133 digital billboards with hours’ notice.
If Ashton won (which he did BTW) he was going to donate money to buy Malaria nets for people somewhere in Africa.That’s all nice and dandy but why couldn’t he just donate the money he spent on all those billboards and leave us alone? That answer is he is using Twitter to promote himself. The platform that we all loved because it gave the Average Joe a voice is now being taken over by celebrities and is starting to lose its power. Its not about the followers! What has he really contributed? I totally agree with Pat Phelan of MaxRoam on this one; its time to get rid of the followers counter, give the power back to the people and focus on the conversation.
What do you think?
-Aryeh
Aryeh, you and the others make a great point about counting Twitter followers. Now that it is becoming “mainstream” it definitely has the possibility of losing its power. My first reaction to reading this was, yes, get rid of the counter. But that’s not really the problem.
The real problem is that Twitter is growing and as it does in fact become more mainstream it will lose many of its benefits and lower barriers that it has offered us until now. (Though like with blogs, it will still be there to a certain extent.) It will be both interesting and sad to see in the future the additional ways celebrities and big brands exploit Twitter.
Spot on. The barriers are going to be put back up.. oh well.
Thanks for the comment.
But did this media furore influence you? Did you follow one of them, did you even follow/unfollow/refollow…
Not that anyone does that???
Does it matter?
If Twitter hid the number of followers would that influence your follow pattern?
Of course it would!!!!
I read that those billboards were all donated by Lamar Advertising, without Ashton even knowing, just to help support his cause.
Really? Do you have a source? That makes it a little better but my point still remains.