"This is like putting a man on the moon. This is changing media forever," Kutcher said on the streaming video site Ustream.tv just before hitting his goal. "It's the Web versus the world right now people."

The actor starting streaming video live late last night to attract followers after CNN started making appeals to its own viewers.

As Kutcher spoke to her via Skype, Oprah welcomed "the newly crowned king of Twitter."

"It was down to the wire," she said. "But around 1 a.m. central time this morning Ashton hit the one million mark beating CNN."

"What I thought was really interesting is that in some ways this is a commentary on the state of media," Kutcher said to Oprah and her audience. "Through your own stream you can have a voice as loud as a media network."

Oprah's First Tweet

In addition to celebrating Kutcher's victory, the queen of day time talk had a landmark moment of her own on Friday. She posted her very first tweet.

Spears' manager, Adam Leber, tweeted on her account, "Let's get Brit across the million mark! Tweet about following @britneyspears for a chance to win 2 tix to Brit's concert."

As of mid-day Friday Spears was still at 967,344 -- short of both CNN and Kutcher.

Initially, Kutcher said that if he succeeded, he would "ding dong ditch" CNN founder Ted Turner's house while shooting his next movie in Atlanta. (In other words, he'll ring the doorbell and run, if he can even get close enough to the door of the mogul's estate.)

But over the past few days, Kutcher and others upped the ante.

Prizes Galore for 1 Millionth Twitter Follower

On Tuesday night, the actor tweeted, "the 1 millionth person gets a guitar hero!" (Presumably referring to the popular video game.)