Ashton Kutcher: Wins Twitter battle with CNN

Ashton Kutcher: Wins Twitter battle with CNN

Ashton Kutcher has proved to be the king of Twitter. In fact he has triumphed over CNN in their much publicized race to be the first for reaching one million followers on the micro-blogging website. Kutcher surpassed that benchmark in the early morning hours on Friday by edging out the breaking news feed from the Time Warner Inc.-owned network.

While speaking in a live webcast early Friday, Kutcher took the tone of a revolutionary.

"We have shown the world that the new wave is here," "It is present and it is ready to explode. You guys are all of it because I can't follow me." Kutcher said on a famous website shortly after passing the million mark.

Kutcher had long trailed CNN. However he staged a rally in recent days that captured the attention of the web. The million mark race was taken by many as a symbol of huge upswing of Twitter's popularity.

In recent times, the site has increased exponentially in visitors. The search engine Yahoo added that on Friday that searches for Twitter over the past 4 months increased over 5,559 percent during the same time last year.

The site allows users to type "tweets" of 140 characters or less on their computers or cell phones, which others "follow" on Twitter like a stock ticker.

Kutcher, who is a rampant user of the site along with wife Demi Moore, added that the Twitter is democratizing media and removing filters between celebrities and fans, big media companies and their customers.

"We can and will create our media," added Kutcher, who is celebrate for his victory with champagne and by posting the tweet, "Victory is ours!"

This thirty one year old Kutcher had claimed that he would "ding-dong-ditch" CNN founder Ted Turner if he won, and pledged to make good on his promise after winning. Sean "Diddy" Combs was among the celebrity "Twitteratti" who supported his run.

Earlier this week CNN's Larry King posted a video thereby jokingly threatening Kutcher by saying,  "CNN will bury you!" Kutcher was to appear on King's program Friday evening.

King was far from the only person sucked into Twitter by the million-mark showdown. Among the many new users to join was Oprah Winfrey, whose entry caused ripples across Twitter.

CNN, Kutcher, and Winfrey pledged to mark the occasion by purchasing mosquito bed nets to combat malaria. Kutcher gave a donation of $100,000 to the Malaria No More Fund, the charity said Friday.

Oprah Winfrey hosted a Twitter special on her show Friday with Kutcher as a guest, connected through the Internet communications service Skype. She also sent her first tweet.