Ashton Kutcher is officially the first person to reach over one million viewers on his Twitter account. He’s been posting videos to his Ustream TV page throughout the night last night (Thursday night) documenting the victory. I hadn’t been paying much (any!) attention to the whole fiasco, but late Thursday night (about 40 minutes after he won) I found myself sucked in to the action and quickly struck by the unique nature of this media/celebrity event (and that was before I started watching the Kutchers on their live video feed).
Of course, the nature of the media event is something Kutcher’s been going on about already – leveraging the feed to promote attention to – malaria?! – of all causes and of course the power of the “little people” against the “big media.”
Tomorrow Oprah will also begin to tweet – she already has an account set up @Oprah (I was the 60,123rd follower!) and Kutcher will be on her show presumably talking about it. So tomorrow’s going to be a big day for Twitter. Might as well sign up for a Twitter feed now and see what it’s all about if you don’t have one already! Come follow me @MoneyEnergy. (If you start following Oprah through the link I gave here let me know, it would be interesting to know if I gave her any followers:)).
Transcript of Ashton Kutcher’s Victory/Thank You Speech (as seen on his Ustream TV webcast)
@aplusk: Yes! Is it a million? Yes!!! We got your check! … We’re taking a break!
[screaming]
It’s happened! … [screaming]
Yeah. [laughing]
Hold on. Hold on. The book is part of the celebration…. we’re still live, we’re still going, the check is still here… ladies and gentlemen, here’s comes a tweet, here comes the tweet
mrskutcher: wow…
Here we go.
[@aplusk and @mrskutcher kiss]
Alright. Now we gotta get serious about this. Lades and gentlemen, boys and girls. People of the interweb. Today we have done something extraordinarily special. we have shown the world that the new wave his here, it is present, and it is ready to explode. You guys are all of it. Because you – I can’t follow me. So, I don’t even count. There are a million people that need to be thanked for this and I’m not one of them, ‘cause I’m not following me, I’m following you. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that you have put and invested your time and energy into making this stand and into making…this sort of announcement to the world about the state of media. We can and will create our own media. We can and will broadcast our own media. We can and will censor our own media ourselves. We are over a million. CNN is still trying to get there… and that’s just the way that goes….
There’s some thanks in order. First of all, a toast to Ted Turner. You are a pioneer in media. In creating CNN…in creating your entire network, in creating your entire conglomerate. You are a pioneer in media. And you had the foresight to see that digital media was going to be the future, even before all of us believed. And for that you deserve to be congratulated. And you deserve to be ding dong ditched… because… at the end of the day, the old guard has passed and the new guard is here and the new guard likes to do things like ding dong ditch people just for fun. Alright.
Beyond that, I think there is some thank-you in order to EA, who jumped in on their own right – and by the way, whoever the millionth follower is and 999, 961 and all of those…you gotta track down EA, because they said they were gonna hold the stats on that and I am not responsible for EA’s payout. I will attempt to facilitate and help facilitate, but you gotta track down EA, they got the numbers, they know who you are. and can look you up. So if you are one of those people, stay… you know, if you eventually wanna block me, block me if you want, if you wanna follow me, don’t follow me… and that’s sort of the great thing about the platform that we have, is that we get to choose what we want to see, what we don’t want to see, and who we want to have broadcast it, so, anybody who wants to unfollow, have at it, feel free, and ah…because you don’t have to listen to me spout off. I may be for some, I may not be for all. And that’s – I’m ok with that, that’s not what this is about.
So, and… next I’d like to thank a guy by the name of Ray Chambers…who introduced me to this quantifiable solution that exists for malaria and our ability to actually exterminate malaria from planet earth. And I hope that this small step, that this contribution, that we are able to make a small contribution that people around the internet and within social media, if you all believe in this, if you all wanna get behind with this, once again you can go to malarianomore.org and you can donate. A dollar makes a difference for this cause. We’re talking about a bednet that costs ten dollars, saves a life. Kids dying every 20 seconds from malaria.
I’d like to thank Ted Turner’s daughter for leaving a video. I’d like to thank Larry King for getting involved in the whole fray. I appreciate it, and welcome to Twitter. Larry… Larry goes by the King’s Things – the King of Things, so he’s @KingsThings…and, thank you Larry, he just offered me a congratulations…
[@mrskutcher says something]
CNN doesn’t have to see. We took the victory. They – did – they went on air, they – it’s over?
[another voice: It’s breaking news.]
Alright. That’s very classy. That’s very classy CNN. CNN…. I am going to go on the show tomorrow night, I’m going to go on the show and have a chat with Larry. With Larry King. And maybe Larry will come on here and have a chat with us all where you guys can ask Larry questions and you all can contribute to the creation of the show, because that’s why we do it here.
And lastly, I’d like to say thanks to Ross… who… introduced me to Twitter in the first place. I’d like to thank the people from TechCrunch, who jumped behind this thing and really put it out there. I’d like to thank Don Dodge, who jumped on board right from the get-go and said that I was gonna be the first to a million. I appreciate that Don. And Don also taught me a lot about the democratization of media, which is really what this is about.
I want to thank Kevin Rose, first of all, you know, for really showing me and being there with me during the introduction to live video. And also, when I got on Twitter the first time, Kevin told his entire following to get behind me, and also everything you do at digg.com is amazing and I am constantly sourcing material from there and I really appreciate that.
[…]
and the rest of the team at Catalyst [?] or making great content we can share with people. […] um…. who else? what else? @mrskutcher. Gotta thank @mrskutcher. [hollers, clapping]
You know, if my wife hadn’t started tweeting she probably would have left me by now… and we have two relationships, we have our real life relationship and then we have one over twitter. So, which is still real life, but it’s one where we actually vocally talk a lot less and type 140 characters at a time.
And lastly, I’d like to thank Twitter. And people at Twitter, everybody over there. You guys have created a platform that I think will change the face of media. And you guys allow people to share, you allow people to connect, in a way that they weren’t able to connect before. And I think that that is really cool. [continues, thanks Facebook crowd…]
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Transcription done by MoneyEnergy. If you liked this post and also like to read about personal finance (what I usually blog about!:)), don’t forget to subscribe to my feed and follow me on Twitter @MoneyEnergy.
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