Its been an interesting week in Twitterland with Ashton Kutcher, @aplusk, challenging CNNBrk, @cnnbrk, to a race to 1 million Twitter followers. Kutcher revealed his challenge via this YouTube video where he promised to “ding dong ditch” Ted Turner’s house in Atlanta where he’s filming a movie, if Kutcher beats CNN to the punch.  At the time of the taunt, @aplusk had 842,550 followers, give or take a few. @cnnbrk had 897,969 followers – roughly 50,000 more than Ashton.

Kutcher challenges CNN via Twitter

In a video post, Ashton expressed his astonishment that because of Twitter, one person can have as large a voice online as an entire media company. He appreciated that CNN took his challenge seriously.

Larry King invites Ashton Kutcher to his show

Larry King retorted in a lighthearted challenge acceptance speech posted at YouTube:

“CNN will bury you…I’ll participate in anything you want. You come on my show, I’ll go on your Twitter…If you ring his bell (Ted Turner)…there is a strong possibility that he’ll send a bison to your house. I know CNN will beat you. But don’t take it badly, don’t take it personally. You’re one guy. They’re an entire gorge network. We will defeat you.”

The saga continued when Oprah called. Yes, Oprah. She invited Ashton to do a remote interview about the CNN challenge and perhaps more importantly,  Twitter. Oprah released her first tweet in today’s show. (Can you imagine the fail whales that we’ll see today on Twitter?)

Oprah invites Kutcher on her show

Meanwhile, back at the CNN ranch, the story within a story was breaking. The Business Insider first broke the account with this expose: “CNN Acquires CNNbrk Twitter Account With Nearly 1 Million Followers.”

Yes, that’s correct – @cnnbrk was not under CNN’s control until April 15, 2009. This was, of course, just two days after Kutcher’s fun-loving challenge to what he and nearly a million other followers assumed was a CNN-run account. Oops. Can you say, punk’d?

James Cox, a London-based Web developer, created the CNNBrk account in January 2007 and maintained it with the permission and oversight of CNN since mid-2007. But it was apparently an unofficial partnership.

KC Estenson, head of CNN’s online operation, noted that Twitter’s popularity has skyrocketed since the November election: “As Twitter took off and became more prominent, we decided it was time to take our engagement and make it a marriage.”

Interesting times indeed. It’s a bit telling that CNN apparently hadn’t yet grasped the value of their brand at Twitter. Do they not realize that their audience may actually want authentic interaction with “the most trusted source for news?”

This story certainly draws attention to the value of your brand online. It’s not good enough anymore to hope that social media goes away or that your competitors won’t figure it out before you do. It is time to claim your brand and manage it with authenticity.

Ashton Kutcher is his own brand and because he’s realizing that his Twitter followers are really listening,  he’s concerned about the integrity of his name and doing some good while tweeting it up with fans. When you tweet @aplusk, you’re communicating with Ashton himself – not a paid manager. At least for now.

Not everyone can fit Twitter or managing other social campaigns into their busy days. But if you can’t do it, then find an employee or brand advocate who will take responsibility. CNN kind of did that with their unofficial partnership with Cox, but the relationship was more casual than a mega-brand should be exposed for.

Personal and corporate brands that are making their tweets heard are those that also focus on personal, one-to-one communication with their followers. Sure, it takes time and effort and yes, you become more exposed. But for @zappos, @jimmyfallon, @lancearmstrong and @jetblue Twitter is an essential communication tool.

Indeed, in the Age of the Individual, all of us are actually are our “brands” also – whether it be your semi-unique name or what you stand for. In Chris Brogan’s blog, “Elements of a Personal Brand,” he discusses the state of mind of being your own company:

Inside my head, I’m the CEO, project manager, and administrative assistant to my own private company. Employees= 1. With this in mind, I look at every job I take as a project. I look at every project as an opportunity. I talk to everyone professionally as if they’re someone looking to partner with me and my company. This helps me frame everything I do.

And so to answer Ashton’s question -

Oprah and Twitter

Thoughts? With Oprah and CNN shining their megawatt media light on Twitter and the importance of social media, now is the time to get your brand established online if you haven’t already. Remember – uniformity and consistency are very important. You won’t have a unified brand if your username is different at every site. Make Namechk your first step in solidifying your voice in the social mediasphere.

The race for followers highlights the impact of Twitter and the importance of usernames, the people behind the tweets and the value of brand – whether personal or corporate. Brandjacking is the new identity theft and even if someone hasn’t nabbed your social media username, have you really claimed your social media identity and its voice?

We took the opportunity to launch an official press release about yesterday’s launch of Namechk.  The release has received a lot of impressions in the last 12 hours which is exciting.

Excerpts from the press release are below. Read the full release at PRWeb.

Like a vanity domain name, establishing a personal or corporate brand via a strong social media presence or vanity URL makes it easier to be found and followed. For businesses that utilize social media to connect with customers, a large number of followers and “friends” can dramatically effect a company’s bottom line, notes David Gosse, co-creator of Namechk:

“It is increasingly important to develop your personal and company brand consistently across the major social network websites. That means getting the same username identity as often as possible. It makes it easier for others to find you, and it also builds a cohesive marketing strategy that eventually creates a presence in the major search engines. It also keeps others from tapping into your success and brand jacking your efforts and identity.”

Namechk plans to add new services in the coming weeks, including user-submitted site additions, tips on interesting people and brands to follow and a feature that will auto-register a selected username at available sites.

Welcome to the newly launched namechk.com website. We decided to launch it April 1, 2009 just for fun. We will definitely be adding additional features to the username look-up service over time, but we knew that a lot of users were looking for an application like this and that a better option was needed in the space.

Please feel free to send us your comments, suggestions and any bugs you find with the site. The easiest way to connect with us is to follow namechk on Twitter and just send us a tweet. The Twitter feed will keep a record of bug fixes and new features.

Thanks - hope you like it!