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If you're involved in social networking and you've not heard about the Ashton Kutcher/CNN showdown, you should probably check yourself for a pulse. In a nutshell, Kutcher has promised to prank Ted Turner if his Twitter account, @aplusk, makes it to 1 million followers before @cnnbrk (which, prior to this week, wasn't even owned by CNN). Even with the stuff Kutcher is promising if he wins, this is still rank stupidity.

But it's not the only big celebrity news hitting Twitter. It turns out that afternoon TV show diva Oprah is now getting into the whole Twitter mess, with the @oprah account (no less). Her account is there, and scuttlebutt (well, a @scobleizer tweet) has it that she'll be sending her first tweet tomorrow on her show.

This brings up the question: With Twitter becoming so mainstream now, what with the storm of celebrity taking place, what will be the next social networking coup be for them? Will they invade FriendFeed? Start their own networks? Bring Friendster back from obscurity?

In any case, they're doing their jobs well. As annoying as these attention freaks are, they are helping bring new technologies mainstream through their use and promotion of them. And in the end, this betters us all! As distasteful as I find all this, in the end it really is for the best.

Just so long as they keep out of my hair.