Ashton Kutcher at the Brainstorm conference earlier this year
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)Everybody panic!
Seemingly unable to let any hot social media start-up escape his hunky clutches, it appears that actor and prolific Twitter oversharer Ashton Kutcher is now using where-you-at, ping-your-friends city guide app Foursquare. A tipster pointed me to a Foursquare account for user "aplusk," the same handle that Kutcher uses on Twitter for his 3 million-plus followers.
Is it real? Well, his friends include Digg founder (and occasional bromancer) Kevin Rose, videoblogging personality Justine Ezarik, and "mrskutcher," which is the Twitter username for his wife, actress Demi Moore. Since Foursquare requires mutual approval of friend connections, this would indicate that the likes of Rose and Moore believe the account to be legit. And since Kutcher's Twitter account is linked to the Foursquare profile, which requires using the Twitter log-in credentials, it's either legit or Kutcher's Twitter account has been hacked. (And there have been no indications as to the latter.)
So why is this important? Well, it could be pretty momentous for Foursquare if Ashton Kutcher sticks around.
All joking aside, the 31-year-old Kutcher has been a prominent, and admittedly important figure when it comes to bringing social-media tools into the mainstream. His race to beat CNN to 1 million Twitter followers (he won) was one of the publicity blitzes that put the name of the microblogging service on the pop-culture map. Foursquare, a tiny New York-based start-up that launched only six months ago out of the ashes of the ill-fated Dodgeball and still hasn't wrapped up a round of venture funding (though I hear they're working on it) could really get a boost from this--assuming their servers are ready for it.
But it also raises an important security question. Unless they're using Foursquare to broadcast their locations for promotional purposes (as some party photographers and DJs in NYC are already doing, and it'd be certainly interesting if Kutcher did something like this), celebrities using any kind of GPS-based or geolocation app could be making themselves vulnerable to varying degrees of annoyance ranging from pesky fans with cameras to full-on stalking. It could also make Foursquare an appealing target for hackers.
But I assume Kutcher, who seems like a pretty smart guy, will be careful with who he lets onto his friends list. Now for the real question: how long before he unlocks a "Crunked" badge?
UPDATE (1:06 p.m. PT): Just to clarify, a few people were under the impression Kutcher had already deleted his Foursquare account. That was actually due to a broken link in this blog post; Kutcher is, for the time being, still on Foursquare. (My bad.)
On a completely different note, I recommend reading this follow-up post on branding consultant Matt Spangler's blog about what Ashton Kutcher means for Foursquare.
Oprah's second-ever tweet. Um, yeah.
(Credit: Twitter)A correction was made to this post. See below for details.
Oprah's crazy about it. Ashton Kutcher and Anderson Cooper are making fools of themselves trying to show what rabid fans they are. Friday, April 17, 2009, will pretty much go down as the day when the loyally followed indie-rock band known as "Twitter" made its big major-label splash.
If it were the late '90s, this would be its big debut on "Total Request Live" with Carson Daly emceeing and a bunch of screaming girls outside waving posters with crudely drawn fail-whales and "MARRY ME, EVAN WILLIAMS!" scrawled on them. But in keeping with the '90s pop-culture references, it's starting to remind me a little bit too much of "That Thing You Do," the 1996 Tom Hanks flick about a one-hit-wonder pop band that has a smash hit in the wake of the '60s British Invasion and is then never heard from again after mainstream fame makes them more about the image and less about the music.
(Credit:
20th Century Fox)
The issue I have with all this Twitter mega-buzz is that it has the capacity to pack a double punch--in a bad way. First, the media blitz and celebrity endorsements can solidify it as a fad, like the momentarily trendy "pet rock" of Web 2.0. And second, it can tick off the early adopters, the ones who were really at the core of Twitter for its first few years as a geek cult phenomenon. There are already a few who aren't too thrilled about the fact that the Kutcher-CNN million-follower race appears to have been gamed by Twitter itself.
Mainstream success is great for Twitter, which is legitimately shaking up media and communications in ways that I don't think many people thought it would a few years ago. But I certainly hope that all the celebrity frenzy isn't veering it off course on its real, long-term development strategy. You know, like a business model. In "That Thing You Do," the band's descent into gimmickiness is best expressed by the fact that the manager, played by Hanks, suggests that the drummer always wear sunglasses onstage. Let's hope that the Ashton Kutcher-mania doesn't turn out to be the same for Twitter.
On the other hand, back in the '90s Kutcher was best known for playing a teenage stoner on "That '70s Show." I'm pretty sure no one thought he'd ever be heard from again.
Yikes! As a number of you have pointed out in the comments section, I goofed on the movie trivia. In "That Thing You Do," it was indeed the drummer who had to wear the sunglasses. We've fixed that, and thanks all for the catch. (1:22 p.m. PDT)
Ashton Kutcher
(Credit: Andrew Mager/CBS Interactive)
What a pairing: Hollywood slacker-hottie icon Ashton Kutcher and Silicon Valley slacker-hottie icon Kevin Rose have teamed up to create 24 Hours at Sundance, a Web-based reality show set at the eponymous film festival in Park City, Utah, later this week.
Backed by mobile live-streaming start-up Qik, the competition-focused show will pit four "social media mavens" against one another for 24 straight hours as they complete a set of challenges surrounding the annual film festival and broadcast them via Qik software on Nokia handsets. Rose (best known for founding Digg) and Kutcher, the Dude, Where's My Car actor whose production company Katalyst Media has created a Web show called Blah Girls, will co-host.
The four "social media mavens" are VentureBeat editor Matt Marshall, gadget blogger Meghan Asha, Konsole Kingz founder CJ Peters, and video blog personality Irina Slutsky.
"I kind of feel like there's been a trend in entertainment in general that moves toward a more visceral, more live experience," Kutcher told CNET News. "We have an idea of what we want to happen, but who knows what's actually going to happen."
Kevin Rose
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News)"I don't think I've ever heard of anything else that's been done like this before, especially with the real time nature," Rose added. "It's only a matter of time before people in Hollywood and just everyone in general wants to participate and have a way to live-stream and connect with people they care about." Well, maybe not everyone.
From what it sounds like, dot-com culture geeks may find this fairly amusing. Kutcher told CNET News that one of the challenges will involve tracking down and interviewing dot-com icon Jason Calacanis, who will be present at Sundance. The Weblogs Inc. and Mahalo founder relocated to the L.A. area several years ago and has started to get a foothold in the Hollywood scene.
"It's unbelievable, it's like him versus (Robert) DeNiro for roles," Kutcher joked of Calacanis, who played himself in last year's film August, which chronicled a failing fictional dot-com. "It's getting out of control."
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