Race to 1 Million Twitter Followers: Ashton Kushner v. CNN v. 4Chan

Some of you may know about the race between Ashton Kushner (@aplusk) and CNN (@cnnbrk) to hit 1 million followers on Twitter. If not, you do now. If Ashton beats CNN, then he will donate 10,000 bed nets on April 25th, World Malaria Day, and the 1 millionth follower will get a free copy of Guitar Hero. If CNN beats Ashton, they will do the same.

What is most interesting about this race is the dark horse challenger, Dr. Joseph Frieschel (a.k.a. @basementdad). Interestingly, Dr. Frieschel does not actually exist. He is instead the creation of a 4chan member who wrote a script that is creating fake twitter accounts that then automatically follow Dr. Joseph Frieschel. Dr. Frieschel is also a oblique reference to Joseph Fritzl, the Austrian who kept his daughter in his basement for 24 years.

And it just might work. When @laughingsquid and I looked at @basementdad earlier today, there were only 240,000 followers and a few hours later there are 297,000.

Finally, the other long shot might be none other than Oprah who is going to feature Twitter on her show tomorrow. Stay tuned.

More Coverage: ReadWriteWeb