This week, I lost faith in my social media bubble of existence.

We are all aware that celebrities such as Britney Spears, Shaquil O’Neal, and Demi Moore jumped on board the Twitter train. However, until now, they merely co-existed with the remainder of the population.

This week, Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), decided to challenge the news network, CNN, to a race to 1 million. Kutcher commented on the state of our media by insisting that he could impact just as many people as an entire network. As with all celebrity brawls, however, there were petty shots. Larry King attacked Kutcher by saying “Do you know how big we are? Do you know what CNN is?!” Nevertheless, Kutcher continued the fight and prevailed early Friday morning around 2:00am. CNN also reached 1 million followers…only a half hour later.

The race itself did not bother me. We should be used to these online cattle drives by now considering the floods of Facebook groups touting “1 million to bring back the old Facebook!” or “1000 and I’ll shave my head!”

In actuality, it was the backlash of this experiment that has disheartened me. After seeing Kutcher’s success, Oprah decided to make a huge statement, and join Twitter. Although Oprah’s actually significance is debateable, her influence within pop culture is undeniable.  In my opinion, her decision to take part in this new media experience will revolutionize Twitter. We may see soccer moms organizing weekly snacks via Twitter, single dads trading healthy recipes via Twitter, or maybe retired grandparents grumbling about last week’s Bingo game via Twitter. Whatever the outcome, us social media enthusiasts will need to make some room on board the nerd ship.

Unfortunately, we are already experiencing growing pains. Some “haters” just launched HereBeforeOprah, a site dedicated to demeaning Twitter users that are likely joining due to Oprah’s popularity. And just in case you are worried that followers doubt your authenticity, you can tweet the result to everyone (hooray for self-importance!)

Yes, Twitter is still not entirely mainstream and yes, the majority of users work in technology. But, that is not its goal. Twitter is not meant to be an elitist society of users that wear FailWhale shirts and have Tweet-ups to talk about how they use Twitter.

If soccer moms want to join Twitter, who cares? The best part about using Twitter is that….hold on, this may be difficult to grasp….you CHOOSE who to follow. It’s not like Facebook where you are bloated with external group requests and follow requests and highligher parties with friends from 6th grade. Twitter allows you to create your own network of followers.

How is communication expected to advance if users feel that only a certain number of people are entitled to its use? I am excited to see the outcome of this revolution in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more insight into our constantly evolving communication system.