Ashton who? Zaibatsu’s Race to 500k

Guest Post from @AmyVernon

If you haven't by now heard of the Twitter "Race to 1 Million Followers" between CNN's Breaking Tweets (@CNNBrk) and Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), I either commend you for your ability to not care about the latest celebrity news or fear you for your utter disconnection from society.

But not every effort to rise to the upper reaches of the Twittersphere is as high-profile or, frankly, one-way as that. Take Reg Saddler (@Zaibatsu) - the man is recently passed 81,000 followers and is neither a major news organization nor a Hollywood star. His goal? A cool half-million.

But while CNNBrk has 1.3 million-plus followers, the account is following just six. Sure, it is the breaking news account of CNN, so it might not be surprising that there's little interaction; the account is specifically meant to share the latest breaking news. But aplusk is following a whopping 146 while he's followed by more than 1.5 million.

Zaibatsu generally follows just about 1,000 more people than are following him (though as of this morning, his followers had surpassed those he's following). And the man sure as heck interacts with his followers. If you follow him, sure you might be one among tens of thousands, but it probably won't feel that way. Especially if you're a woman, but not exclusively so.

Zaibatsu's as likely to #FollowFriday recommend someone with a few dozen followers as he is to rec someone with a few thousand, and what has made him successful on Twitter is the same thing that made him a success on Digg - he floods the zone, but in a good way.

Before being banned from Digg (that's another story for another day, and it's been written about many times already), Z had reached the vaunted position of the third most successful site member of all time, meaning he'd had more submissions reach the front page than all but two other people.

He friended many newbies and though he expected people to digg his submissions, he generally gave as good as he got. And so it is on Twitter. In the hour around 5 a.m. EDT today (he lives in the Mountain time zone, so it's two hours earlier there), he sent out more than 10 tweets. I'm not sure the man actually sleeps.

Sometimes it takes a little while for Z to respond to a DM or an @ reply, but he always does. He gets it - the "social" part of "social media." If you want to move eyeballs, you have to give more than you get.

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