• TechCrunch, Friday, April 17, 2009 12:15 PM

"The first man in space. The first man on the moon. The first man with a million Twitter followers." Yes, congratulations to movie star Ashton Kutcher. He beat CNN in the race to be the first person/company to have one million followers on Twitter. TechCrunch's MG Siegler notes that Kutcher had humble beginnings on Twitter, starting with just a handful of followers when he and his actress wife Demi Moore signed up for the service a few months ago.

"They would talk about nothing, like everyone else on Twitter, and sometimes they would talk about each other. It's a true web success story," Siegler says, before adding: "Seriously though, I, like the rest of you, am glad this is over. A million users is significant only in that it means Twitter is hugely popular -- which we already knew. And that it's getting taken over by celebrities -- which a lot of us saw coming. Much more interesting will be when some non-celebrity feed passes a million followers. But it may be a long time before that happens. The name of the game on Twitter is self promotion, and celebrities have a huge advantage in that department over regular folks."

One nice thing about Kutcher's success is that he will be donating 10,000 bed nets to fight malaria in Africa. The actor will appear on Oprah's talk show to talk about this and hopefully, make good on his promise to punk CNN founder Ted Turner.

Read the whole story at TechCrunch »