Ashton Kutcher Challenges CNN For Malaria Nets

Earlier this month, Ashton Kutcher used Twitter to encourage his fans to support World Malaria Day on April 25. Now he has challenged CNN to a popularity race to get 1 million followers on the micro-blogging site. And he’ll make a charity donation if he wins.

“I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter,” Kutcher says in a video. "So I just thought that was just kind of an amazing comment on the state of our media, and I said that, if I beat CNN to 1 million viewers, then I would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner — because I don’t think it’s gonna happen."

If Kutcher wins the challenge, he has agreed to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to Malaria No More, a charity he encourages his fans to support.

“Malaria No More is determined to end malaria deaths in Africa,” he said. “Malaria No More uses breakthrough communications, global advocacy and smart investments to advance the goals of providing universal access to malaria interventions by the end of 2010 and ending deaths by 2015. Every 30 seconds – the time it takes to send and receive a Tweet – a child dies from malaria, but a simple mosquito net can save lives.”

As of Wednesday, Kutcher had 896,947 followers, putting him in third place behind Britney Spears and CNN. No Twitter user has attracted 1 million followers before.