Do you know what Twitter is? No? Well, according to the website:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

If you’re familiar with Facebook, it’s kind of like how you update your status there. So, in 140 characters or less, you continually “tweet” what you’re up to. According to NY times “It’s one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.” Personally, I just can’t be bothered! I don’t really want everyone to know what I’m up to, anyway.

However, it is fast gaining popularity. Companies like Starbucks are using it as a means to communicate with their customers. They constantly update their feed with tidbits, answer coffee-related questions, and much more. News portals, even our own New Straits Times is on Twitter! During the Mumbai attacks, journalists were using Twitter to get news out real time, and information was spread really rapidly.

Another phenomenon that I’ve been following for awhile is the emergence of book bloggers. Previously, whenever I wanted to get book recommendations, I’d go to a bookshop and start browsing. That became much more difficult when the bookshops started wrapping up their books in plastic, making it impossible to browse, unless you take the book to the customer service and ask them to unwrap it, which is so troublesome. So then I started checking the bestsellers lists, and reading customer reviews on Amazon. And now, I go to my favourite book blogs! There are lots of book bloggers out there, and they constantly review books. The more popular ones even get advanced copies of books from the authors, and they hold competitions where the winners will get the books. Some methods I’ve seen include:

1. Comment on that post and you get one entry
2. Blog about it on your blog, and link back to the post, and you’ll get five entries
3. “Tweet” it, and you’ll get ten entries

So as you can see, Twitter is really taking off! But not quite so fast in Malaysia as compared to the US, of course…

Anyway, let’s get to the reason that I decided to do a post on Twitter. I was reading the news, and I saw that there was a Twitter competition going on between Ashton Kutcher and CNN’s breaking news team. They’re both racing to get to 1 million followers! I think they both have over 990,000 followers at the moment, so it’s going to be a tight race. The point of this competition? Hmm, I don’t really know, popularity, I suppose?

But it is going to do some good to the world. Ashton Kutcher has pledged that if he wins, he will donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity in honor of World Malaria Day. CNN has also said that they will match the offer. Come on, CNN, you’re a huge corporation, and Ashton Kutcher is but one person…you should be doing more!

Edited to add: And the winner is Ashton Kutcher!

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