Twitter Comes of Age

Twitter... Twitter... Twitter! It's even more in the media than the last time I wrote a blog post about it. I think it's a fascinating phenomenon to be honest and have two blog entries about it.
Just a few days ago, Ashton Kutcher realized that he almost had as many Twitter followers as CNN Breaking News! Kutcher, @aplusk, had more trhan 800,000 followers and was trailing CNN by thousands of followers. He decided that it was pretty awesome he was the 3rd most followed on Twitter, after CNN and Britney Spears, and so he came up with a challenge!
Ashton asked his fans and the world wide web to follow him on Twitter so that he could reach 1,000,000 followers before CNN did. No one had that many followers. He posted a video on the Internet and made it clear he was serious about it.
CNN was quick to respond with CNN's Rick Sanchez addressing the challenge mocking Kutcher's notion and Larry King making a funny video telling Kutcher not to feel bad, but there was no way one man could stand up to a "gorge network."
Well, the man, albeit a famous one prevailed!
The news has been all a twitter the last couple of days and Asthon Kitcher and P. Diddy (Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, etc.), an other avid twitterer, appeared on Larry King Live to talk about the shift.
There has been a shift! How great? I don't know, but there has been a shift.
Traditional media is important, very important, but the times are changing and some people, many people want to also get Ashton Kutcher's insights and muses on life and the news. Granted, he's not a trained journalist, but most people realize that... they just want fresh perspectives.
There has been so much talk about twitter later that the queen of talk, Oprah Winfrey, decided to jump aboard with her own account, @oprah. Already, she has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, with more than 35,000 in the first day.
This will impact the way many people get their news. People and with the way trends works, and more people will follow the early adopters,twitter will become a more important social networking site and source of information. People will get news updates on their smart phones and get snippets of information that will shape their view of the news.
They will not only get news bulletins from news organizations, but opinion and reaction to the news from celebrities, opinion columnists, bloggers and their own friends.
It's a true shift... it begins a conversation. There is a danger in this though and that's what the next blog post will address.
What say you? Is this really a shift? Or am I giving Ashton Kutcher to much credit for his shtick? He did say he would donate 10,000 nets to prevent malaria in Africa--that's a good thing either way!

originally posted April 18, 2009