Inside Facebook

Ashton Kutcher and CNN have been publicizing their recent race to 1 million Twitter followers recently, with Kutcher saying he will donate 1,000 malaria nets to Malaria No More and video game publisher EA offering to put Kutcher’s 1,000,000th follower in The Sims 3. It’s been covered everywhere from Cele|bitchy to TechCrunch. Currently, it’s a dead heat, with Kutcher at about 955,000 followers, and CNN at about 969,000.

However, ironically, Kutcher’s public profile on Facebook has just crossed 1 million fans first – growing by 600,000 fans in the last 3 days, according to PageData – despite any direct promotion. During the same time frame, Kutcher’s Twitter account has gained about 150,000 users, according to Twitterholic.

While the Facebook fan explosion is almost certainly largely due to the press surrounding the Twitter battle – and Facebook is many times larger than Twitter in terms of active users – it’s nonetheless interesting that Kutcher’s Facebook fan base has also grown so quickly. Currently, it’s adding several thousand fans every 10 minutes.