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Ashton Kutcher wins Twitter battle; Oprah next

The Associated Press

Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to beat him to 1 million followers on Twitter this week.

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By The Associated Press

Published: April 17, 2009

Updated: 04/17/2009 12:52 pm

Ashton Kutcher is the Twitter king.

The actor triumphed over CNN in their much ballyhooed race to be the first to reach a million followers on the microblogging Web site. Kutcher surpassed that benchmark in the early morning hours today, narrowly edging out the Time Warner Inc.-owned network.

The actor had long trailed CNN, but he staged a rally in recent days that captured the attention of the Web.

After his come-from-behind win, Kutcher celebrated by tweeting "Victory is ours!" and webcasting a video live on ustream.tv.

At the same time, Oprah Winfrey made her entry to Twitter, joining the site and holding a Twitter special on her show today with Kutcher as a guest. She gained 100,000 followers in less than a day.

Kutcher, CNN and Winfrey pledged to mark the occasion by purchasing mosquito bed nets to combat malaria. Kutcher donated $100,000 to the Malaria No More Fund, the charity said today.

Though celebrities have become commonplace on Twitter — where people "follow" each other's updates of 140-characters or less — Winfrey's entry was sure to cause ripples.

The talk show host was welcomed onto the site with messages from George Stephanopoulos, Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Fallon and Shaquille O'Neal.

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