Just heard the news that Ashton Kutcher won the Twitter Challenge against CNN earlier this morning.

If you haven’t heard, here’s the update…

This whole thing started with a web video by Ashton challenging CNN to a race to 1 million Twitter followers. Here’s the catch though, if he won, he promised to donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day. CNN committed to match that donation regardless if they won or not.

At around 2am this morning, Ashton hit his 1 millionth follower and he threw a party, streaming it live on video.

But here’s what’s so cool. Oprah Winfrey has now jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. She set up her official Twitter account today. Before she was able to post her first tweet, she had reached 73,000 followers.

Talk about the power of social media!

You can find further info here.

Check out what Oprah had to say about the challenge from The Oprah Winfrey show that aired today…

Vincent Hunt, for all who may not know, is indeed responsible for speaking volumes in my life since I was in middle school. His spiritual wisdom and creative insight is beyond remarkable. Recently, he dropped something on me that has been loud in my ears for the past few weeks. It’s a little something he would call…

One Forty or Less

If you are a Twitterholic, then you know where I’m about to go with this. The idea is that “anything of relevance can be said in 140 characters or less”. Anything!

I’ve been wrecking my brain with this and I think the greatest discovery is that many of us shape our lives, our ideas, and our beliefs around great minds who spoke in 140’s. From Gandhi to Aristotle to Solomon to Jesus, these legends have helped us understand life and purpose at a deeper and simpler level.

Take the book of Proverbs… profound truths written by Solomon in 140 characters or less. Can you imagine the quality of life for a man or woman who meditates and lives by the truths of those who spoke in 140 or less?

So…

In response to my Vincent launching yet another buzz-worthy way to spark conversation and to simplify the clutter that we call life, I have decided to do a few 140’s myself. Maybe you can join in and add to the conversation. Anything from quotes to scriptures to old sayings – even your own – are acceptable… but the only requirement is that they must be 140 or less.

Twitter.Com/OneFortyOrLess

I must admit… I’m a Twitterholic. I’ve been twittering now for a few months, and I love it. It’s a great way to stay informed with the “by-the-minute” life of friends, family and people you admire. Have you ever wondered what goes on in the life of ________? Well, Twitter has made this dream come true.

“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates – otherwise known as tweets – which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length” (Wikipedia). Awesome example of Web 2.0 at its best!

Not only that, I am able to sync my Twitter account to my iPhone using the awesome Twitter application, “TweetDeck“. And this makes me a happy camper (lol). It’s neat, clean and works well with my phone. Now I can get all my updates on the go. An amazing platform for aggregating mobile conversation.

So, with that said, here’s my question to you..

How can the Church leverage this kind of technology both inside and outside of their services? How can church leaders and staff use this to conduct informal meetings or to keep each other informed?

Today marks a big day. I did a google search of my name. Now, before I go into all of this, let me first make this disclaimer… “I am not just trying get up in ranks on Google.” Ok, got that out of the way.

Now.

I have google’d my name since I was a child, and the closest I would see my name was usually around page number 30 if not at all. I practically didn’t exist in the webosphere then. Over the last year, I’ve been doing a lot of ground work to develop a solid presence in the web because I do believe that God has given us all something unique to offer, and I think my niche delves into primarily 3 things… “Technology, Church, & Culture”. I’m sure you are very much aware that these three things are among the most relevant and talked about topics on the web. So to not have a voice would be somewhat detrimental for me.

It wasn’t until 2 weeks ago that I finally decided to not only own some space in the websphere through social media and blogging, but to own my name in the websphere as well. So I headed on over to GoDaddy.com and scooped up my name .com, and got it synced to my blog. I’ve been connecting all of my social networks to this focal point and it has definitely paid off.

The main point here is that I google’d my name today, and ANTWONDAVIS.COM is the first result. That’s a pretty big deal! I’ve carved out space in the websphere and Google has taken notice. I’m glad that it isn’t some weird site or some social network that I’m apart of that is first. Instead, it’s something I’ve taken my time to develop, and that’s this awesome blog that you are reading. Thanks for stopping by my neck-of-the-woods every now-and-then and checking me out. You’ve helped me carve out space.