April
16
Ashton Kutcher vs. Everybody: The Twitter Smackdown!
Laurie Percival at Lalawag astutely noticed that Ashton Kutcher has somehow managed to finagle nearly 800,000 Twitter followers -- second only to CNN Breaking News. Then Kutcher made a video saying he would "ding dong ditch" Ted Turner's house if he got 1 million followers before CNN.
Meanwhile, fameball* Julia Allison promised to dye her hair red if she could reach 25,000 Twitter followers before Kutcher hits 1 million. (She also promises to "video it. And send it to Ted Turner." By that I don't know if she means sending the hair or the video, not that Turner would care either way or that it would represent any radical gesture on her part. But I digress.)
Perez Hilton promised nekkid pictures of Zac Efron and Robert Pattinson (together?!) if he gets more followers than Ashton. And Larry King shot a video of his mock-tough schtick, taunting Kutcher for thinking he can top CNN.
That was yesterday. At this writing, Kutcher's Twitter numbers have jumped to 921,871, with CNN at 955,224. (For what it's worth, he already dwarfs the New York Times, Barack Obama and NPR.) And tomorrow, he will be on the Larry King Show "discussing his Web video post earlier this week challenging CNN to a popularity contest on the internet social media site Twitter. Kutcher and CNN are each trying to achieve 1 million followers before the other on the popular micro-blog."
Yeah.
Remember in the fifth grade, on Valentine's Day, when it became all important to collect more valentines than anyone else -- didn't matter who they were from, what they said or if they said anything at all?
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Looks like Ashton might have been supplied by this serivce...
(TMZ) — A Hollywood celebrity magazine publisher and her associates are under investigation by U.S. and Mexican authorities for allegedly operating an international sex trafficking ring that smuggled young Mexican women and underage girls into California and forced them into prostitution — almost exclusively providing their services to celebrities in the Southern California area.
According to sources, officials from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, along with Mexican Federal Police, are investigating whether Bel Hernandez, 43, of Valinda, Calif., who is publisher West Covina-based Latin Heat magazine, along with unnamed associates, targeted young, uneducated, impoverished, undocumented women and girls from Mexico, and conspired to lure and smuggle them into the United States, where they were put to work as prostitutes. Victims were enticed with false promises of legitimate jobs, but after arranging for the victims to be smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border, the Hernandez and fellow suspects compelled the victims to perform acts of prostitution.
Authorities also have reason to believe Hernandez used her Hollywood connections to provide prostitutes to prominent actors, music artists and other celebrities in the Los Angeles area. According to sources, the victims, all Mexican nationals, were passed from one smuggler to another as they made their way through Mexico and eventually crossed the border into San Diego from Tijuana.
Officials from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Task Force on Human Trafficking and the U.S. Attorney’s Office also have joined in the investigation. Charges can include sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; importation of aliens for purposes of prostitution; providing housing and transportation and scheduling customers in exchange for a share of prostitution earnings; conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in a scheme to prostitute minor females; and sexually exploiting minors to produce child pornography. Additional charges include conspiracy to harbor, conceal and transport illegal aliens; and coercion and enticement of an alien to cross state lines and engage in prostitution.
Posted by: Deborah Cranston | April 16, 2009 at 03:21 PM
Has anyone "Twittered" that Ted Turner no longer owns or runs CNN, and hasn't for several years?
Posted by: M. A. Carroll | April 20, 2009 at 01:42 PM
Does anybody truly care how many followers any of these people have? If you want to follow someone for some reason, fine, but this boasting stuff... yeah, very schoolyard/grade school.
Posted by: elyse | April 27, 2009 at 06:51 AM
funny how actors with no talent have to resort to publicity stunts
Posted by: bob stevens | April 27, 2009 at 04:53 PM
Thanks, another great post. I will check out tweets like me. I still am wondering if twitter would be an excellent tool to have rolling on a website almost like a chat for the users of your site with similar interest.For further information visit: http://thetwittersecret.com
Posted by: Peter | September 22, 2009 at 05:28 AM