It makes no difference.
Here's why:
@aplusk (Ashton's twitter ID) is merely tapping into the unidirectional broadcast side of a powerful social media tool. For his 1 million plus followers he listens in to under one hundred. And unlike @cnnbrk (CNN breaking news) he's not providing as much information utility. This is fine by Ashton as he has stated he understands the system and the power to listen in is ultimately in the hands of the user.
There are some powerful positive repercussions of his follower victory. Unlike in the story of John Henry, the individual is proving more powerful than the machine. There is also a new rush of media attention to twitter and social media which is great news for the creators of twitter and likely other social media startups.
The donation of 100k to fight Malaria would have been covered by CNN, and either way media attention was brought to the platform. It begs the question, what would you say if you had a potential million listeners tuned in?