There is a little popularity contest going on between Hollywoods favourite slacker Ashton Kutcher and megagiant news network mogul Ted Turner. See, Kutcher thinks he can generate more people following him on the latest social networking craze, Twitter. Well Ted Turner would have none of it and threw down the gauntlet and the game is on.

What was originally a friendly wager that began with Ashton saying if he got over the mil, he would “Ding Dong Ditch” Ted Turner’s residence and has now become a publicity event with charitable donations and EA Games offering up a fancy prize too.

Right now it looks like Kutcher is on target to take the lead.

TechCrunch says:

Kutcher surged past CNN on Thursday evening, likely clearing the last hurdle that stands between him and Ted Turner’s doorstep — he promised to ding dong ditch the CNN founder if he was the first to a million followers. Since then, Kutcher and others have upped the stakes. EA is offering Kutcher’s millionth follower a copy of every single game it makes in 2009 and a role in its Sims 3 game. And now Kutcher is offering to buy 10,000 bed nets to help stop the spread of malaria in Africa if he wins. CNN has also pledged to buy bed nets, win or lose.

But the stage is set for Kutcher to hit the mark first. With over 980,000 followers currently, he’s appearing tomorrow on Oprah to talk about Twitter along with the service’s CEO Evan Williams. And Oprah, who just secured her Twitter account today, has promised that she will send her first tweet tomorrow during the show.

It appears the inability to “unfollow” either of these Twitter users is because of EA Games offer to give the millionth follower a prize, and people seeing Kutcher so close to the finishline may attempt to drop and re-add the star’s Twitter feed.

I imagine the power of Oprah’s brainwashing (how many books get bought after they are featured on her show?) will push Ashton over the top. There seems to be a stalling to Kutcher’s impressive comeback which might just be from all those people waiting til its really close to a million. But I doubt very many of Oprah’s viewership is going to care about any of that stuff and they will get all warm fuzzies by the charitable offer of Ashton Kutcher and will make accounts just to push him over the top.