Funny jokes follow Twitter bug

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Call it a tempest on Twitter.

A bug on the popular social networking site allowed normal, everyday people to get Lady Gaga and Ashton Kutcher to follow them. Basically you could just tweet “accept” followed by “@” and the Twitter user’s name. Check out an example here.

CNet’s Caroline McCarthy got Kutcher to follow her tweets until the unthinkable happened: Twitter reset everyone’s followers and follower numbers to zero. Before you hyperventilate, it’s just until the company fixes that everyone-has-influential-followers-for-15-minutes bug.

Hilarity ensued as influential tweeps suddenly found themselves -- seemingly -- without an audience to hang on their every 140 characters. Joked Foursquare’s Tristan Walker: “mark it ladies and gentlemen. right now (10:06am) I have just as many followers as @aplusk @scobleizer @britneyspears combined!” Danny Sullivan called it “the Great Twitter Follower Crash.”

All in all, a pretty funny fail. Twitter should be back to normal anytime now, it says. So forget having your favorite celeb follow you. Twitter is resetting your popularity status to the same as it ever was.

-- Jessica Guynn