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.

Acknowledging today’s official launch of Namechk, the web’s newest social media username checking service, Go2web20 added the service to its directory.

Go2web20 is one of the largest web 2.0 directories, indexing over 2,700 services. It’s aim to is help people stay current with the new web services. The company constantly updates it directory, keep only active sites listed for its users.

Our appreciation to Orli Yakuel, founder of Go2web20, for the fast response to our launch. Orli’s goal is to add value to the web community and we share that goal. We look forward to adding more valuable services for our users in the near future!

Namechk’s speedy response time was highlighted in a CNET article written today by Josh Lowensohn, associate editor for CNET’s Webware.com blog:

“What’s really impressive about this service is the speed. In a few sample searches, it averaged about 8 seconds from start to finish. And you don’t even have to wait to see all the results because they stream in as it does its business.”

Thanks for the shout out, Josh. We’ll be adding new services in the coming weeks, such as user-submitted recommendations for new social sites and a tool that will actually register at all available sites for you.

We think it is important to brand yourself or your company consistently across the major social network websites. That means getting the same username identity/URL as often as possible. It makes it easier for others to find you, but it also builds a cohesive marketing strategy that eventually does make it into the main search engines.  It also keeps others from tapping into your success and brand jacking your efforts and identity.

So we think it’s important, but what do others think?

Well, recently Jason Calacanis offered Twitter $250,000 for a two year stint on the “suggested users to follow page” that’s displayed after a new user signs up for the service. Most of those suggested users do get followed and Jason thinks it would have netted him between two and ten million followers over the two year term. With that many followers, Jason figures he could drive about a million users per month over to his company website via his tweets so the $250k would have been well worth it.

We think this is only one of many examples of how social networking can be leveraged, but it shows there is a lot of value to your social brand and using namechk.com to secure that brand just makes a lot of sense. We hope you enjoy using the site.

In a recent article by TechCrunch, Michael Arrington discusses the rising importance of vanity URLs at the major social media network websites. To date, Facebook has not made vanity URLs available to their entire member base, only to key celebrities type users rumored to have over 5,000 or more fans. If you are connected or popular enough, Facebook has begun to issue vanity URLs to specific bands, brands or individuals such as Kevin Rose the founder of Digg - http://facebook.com/kevinrose.

Social marketing experts know the value of snagging their unique brand as a vanity URL at the top sites. It is similar to registering a top .com URL back in the early days of the growth of the web. Establishing your brand at all the top sites with a vanity URL makes it easy for others to find you and follow you, and in the marketing world, it is now known that social networking and a large number of followers can dramatically effect the bottom line.

Vanity URLs are unique. Like domains, there is only one available. Being able to identify a username that is unique and available at most of the top sites is why we developed namechk.com. It makes it easy to check dozens of sites to see what username is still available and gives our users a single reference point to use over and over as they register their username at each site.

Social networking is the fastest growing trend online right now. Staking your claim on the web requires setting up your user account at multiple social sites before someone else registers your desired vanity user name. It is important to know what username is still available at all the top sites before you start the process and that is why we setup namechk.com. You type in the desired vanity user name you hope to use as your online identity and check to see if it is available across the majority of the top sites. Like a vanity domain name, establishing your brand via username URLs makes it easier for others to find you and connect with you.

From a marketing standpoint, this is a crucial process that should not be overlooked. Check out this article on the importance of registering your username before someone else does and then tries to sell it back to you.