Despite popular belief, Ashton Kutcher's recent win in Twitter followers over CNN had less to do with the power of social media than the blogosphere claims. Initially, Kutcher, in an effort to beat CNN in the race for 1 million Twitter followers, put out a YouTube video in an effort to drive the 80,000 or so followers he needed to reach the 1 million mark. Interestingly, this did not seem to do enough to put him over the top. Kutcher was even blasted by Larry King, stating he was way out of his league in working to promote himself over one of the world's largest news networks.

More interesting still is what Kutcher did to put the nail in the coffin: he used digital out-of-home. Kutcher used over 1,100 Lamar advertising screens with the call-to-action, "follow Ashton Kutcher on Twitter." The issue I have with this is that social media is more about vitality and less about outdoor advertising and digital signage. Further still, if CNN wanted to beat Ashton Kutcher, they most likely could have easily used different forms of digital media as well and taken themselves over the top much more quickly than Ashton Kutcher ever could have. Why? Well, like Larry King said, they're CNN, not "Dude, Where's My Car?"

I think it's great that thousands of mosquito nets were donated to third world countries for malaria relief. However, let's give credit where credit is due. Viral social media had little to do with becoming Twitter's poster child. One great takeaway here: digital signage works.