As my Twitter education continutes, the recently VERY well publicised battle between Ashton Kutcher and CNN, made me raise my eyebrows. It looked like a complete and utter PR stunt, and not a very subtle one.
And as this post proves, a PR stunt it was – one devised by Twitter themselves!
Well, Twitter certainly achieved their objective, the story was plastered all over the online news, and even ventured into the print media. But did it not completely defy the point of Twitter? Is it not about the quality of followers, in opposition to quantity. I’m very wary of people who follow me who have a larger number of followers/vice versa – are they really interested in what I have to say? I’m not saying that there aren’t a few celebrities that I follow that I am unlikely to hear back from, but I’ve always thought that it should be a two way communication tool, but Mr Kutcher has made a joke of the social media site if you ask me.
Does Ashton Kutcher intend to follow the 1million plus people who took the time to follow him so he could win this completely pointless time waste?
Although this is a free service, the users who logged on to follow Ashton were completely fooled into thinking that they were supporting an actor of choice. Little did they know they were supporting his next advertising strategy.
Twitter is a great tool for those trying to get their messages across, and I don’t think exploiting their own site, is really going to do the Twitter bosses reputation (I like to think they’re actually birds) any good.
The #backlashton, as it has been quite cleverly named, has already began. A simple # search proves that Twitter users are NOT happy with this little stunt. His current follow number is 1,050,374 – but I’m guessing that by Monday this may have reduced slightly.
PR for the sake of PR is exactly what gives the industry a bad name – and I feel that this is an example of a PR stunt gone ary.
Has your opinion of Twitter been affected by this?
Oh, and just so you know, I didn’t follow him. I have no desire to read to what him or his wife has to say. It’s probably not true anyway.
