Remember a few years ago when the race was on to see who would be the first to get to 1,000,000 followers on Twitter?
At the time, the two biggest accounts were @CNNbrk the breaking news feed of CNN and @aplusk the Twitter handle of actor Ashton Kutcher.
The race to 1,000,000 culminated in April 2009. Chronicled here on TVNewser, just after 2amET on the morning of April 17, 2009 Kutcher was first to cross the million mark.
Fast forward almost four years, and both of those accounts have passed 10 million followers. In fact, Kutcher’s @aplusk has more than 13 million followers while @CNNbrk hit 10 million in the last week. So today, the digital newsroom in Atlanta celebrated.
“To me, the milestone is a signal that our approach is working,” says Lila King, CNN’s senior director for Social News. “Over the past few months we’ve worked hard to fine-tune our voice on Twitter and strike a balance between being authoritative and collaborative, and I’d like to think that 10 million would say it’s right on.”
While Kutcher was the first to 1,000,000 he’s only No. 22 on the list of top Twitter accounts today. Lady Gaga holds the lead with 33,073,438; Justin Bieber is next with 32,974,609 and Katy Perry is third with 32,201,464.