Drew Carey Ups Twitter Bid To $1 Million

Comedian and game show host Drew Carey wants to be just plain old Drew -- @Drew, that is.

Carey, who currently Tweets from the cumbersome "DrewFromTV," originally offered $100,000 for the Twitter name "@drew," which is being sold by Drew Olanoff, an early Twitter adopter, as part of an online auction to raise money for cancer research.

UPDATE:
In an interview with CBS, Drew Carey upped his bid for the Twitter name @drew to $1 million, announcing that he would pay $1 million for the account if he could get a million Twitter followers by 2010. See the interview below. He told CBS:

If I get a million by the end of the year, by January 1st, I'll give a million dollars to LiveStrong...And if I don't get a million followers, I'll pro-rate it.

His followers have already increased rapidly since he made his announcement.

Carey had 33,340 followers on Twitter as of October 6, 2009, already up considerably from the 13,000 he had on October 3, 2009. (@drew, by comparison, has only 8,100). As of October 7, 2009, Carey had just over 50,000.

"I'm so happy with my 12,000 [followers]," he said in the CBS interview.

The Telegraph reports:

On Friday he [Olanoff] announced that he was inviting bids of more than $10,000 for his @drew account - a prime piece of Twitter real estate which he claimed as one of the micro-blogging site's early adopters.

Yesterday Carey, who is also well known as the host of the US version of the improv comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, posted an update from his DrewFromTV account saying that he was willing to stump up $25,000.

Carey later upped his offer, saying he would increase his bid to $100,000 if he could snag 100,000 followers by November 9, 2009. And, as reported above, he's upped it a second time.

Will Drew Barrymore get in on the bidding?

WATCH:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Comments

[SteveDenver]

05:33 AM on 10/10/2009

He's gassy

[Ventoi]

05:27 PM on 10/09/2009

Go away again...
I did not miss you while you were gone.

[sidewinderliberal]

06:02 PM on 10/05/2009

clevland sucks

[mitch93]

07:51 PM on 10/05/2009

You Suck!!!!!

[TylerSutherland]

05:11 PM on 10/05/2009

What?! Drew Carey is donating to cancer in some way?! What a jerk! I am filled with uncalled-f­or rage! I demand EFFIGIES FOR MY PRE-TEEN RAGE! AFSGAGOASO­P{ORQWRFRE­DONYOUTUBE­RULZ!~

-Ahem.- Anyways, now that I'm done sarcastica­lly mimicking the basic plot of all the haters in this topic, I'll give my opinion: Go Drew, glad to see being a Libertaria­n hasn't sucked the life out of ya.

[Pagoas]

04:04 PM on 10/05/2009

this guy was really funny when he dressed up in drag as mimi and slathered on all that blue makeup... otherwise he was just kinda bleh.

[mabinog]

08:32 PM on 10/05/2009

dude, someone else played mimi in the drew carey show.

[up420oz]

11:51 PM on 10/07/2009

really? REALLY????

you can't possible be that dumb.

[Forester]

03:41 PM on 10/05/2009

Let's hope the price is right.
Sounds like a clever way to raise money for a good cause.

[pharmmajor]

02:18 PM on 10/05/2009

Drew & Drew rock.

[Stilts9]

02:06 PM on 10/05/2009

@jerk

[kirtlandpat]

03:38 PM on 10/05/2009

Since you didn't read the article, I'll put it down here for you where you might.....

Carey offered $100,000 for the Twitter name "@drew," which is being sold by Drew Olanoff, an early Twitter adopter, as part of an online auction to raise money for cancer research.

[Stilts9]

01:34 PM on 10/06/2009

Sorry, I made a sloppy mistake.

[deepintheheartoftejas]

06:30 PM on 10/05/2009

It totally pisses me off, too, when someone is trying to raise money for cancer research. Effing jerks.

[ramblingjohnny]

09:04 AM on 10/06/2009

I wonder who got @jerk it might be worth something?

[Stilts9]

01:35 PM on 10/06/2009

I made a sloppy mistake.

[krisis]

01:35 PM on 10/05/2009

I am both a friend-of and fundraiser­-with Drew Olanoff, the present user behind @drew), and this is just one more surreal and remarkable chapter in his story.

Drew was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma on May 20. He had already done some fundraisin­g to benefit cancer-rel­ated charities, but in the 100 days after his diagnosis he raised more than $10k for LiveStrong and other cancer charities, became an official spokesman for LiveStrong­, jumped out of a plane (with me!), threw a 24hr live-strea­med benefit event, and spread his quirky #blamedrew­scancer hashtag to over 12,000 unique twitter users.

No matter what you feel about Twitter or Drew Carey, this is an awesome story about giving selflessly and using social media for social good - and I’m so proud to be a part of it. Now many of Drew’s masses are “resolved” (i.e. GONE!), and he’s talking about starting his own charity to support LiveStrong with outreach to young people diagnosed with cancer.

Check out http://bla­medrewscan­cer.com for more about Drew Olanoff and his campaign to beat up on cancer.

(ps: HuffPoster­, @drew is available for media inquiries – just send him an @)

[fcsakes]

02:01 PM on 10/05/2009

Thank you for the informatio­n - you ALL sound like stand-up people!

[DanniD]

03:52 PM on 10/05/2009

Both Drews rock in my book and you do, too! Thanks for the details!

[WhatDaBleep]

01:19 PM on 10/05/2009

What a Dweeb - Twitter will go the way of the Beanie Babies in the not to distant future!

[Guytar]

01:29 PM on 10/05/2009

Sorry bleep. You are the dweeb.


Read the story. Drew Carey is paying big bucks because the money is going to cancer research.

Drew Olanoff and Drew Carey are a couple of cool drews.

[redkim]

02:51 PM on 10/05/2009

Yes, and learn how to use the correct "too" "to" or "two" in a sentence. The "to" you used is incorrect. Usually the words "to" and "too" have a different inflection when spoken, with "too" having the slightly longer inflection (the extra "o").

In natural speech (not when we are reading things out loud) the "too" spelling in "Not too distant future" has a slightly different and longer sound than, say, "Back to the Future."

This is a common mistake people here make and it bugs me. If people would only recognize their natural speech patterns reflect (usually) the proper spelling with "To" "Too" and "Two" then they'd spell correctly more often.

[Theda]

03:54 PM on 10/05/2009

Cool story. Drew Carey is a wonderful guy and very philanthro­pic.
Speaking of grammer...­....it irritates me when people write "there" or "their" instead of "they're"
And of course....­......"you­r" instead of "you're"
On a movie website, a guy recently wrote about Leonardo DiCaprio's "movie rolls."
I had to tell him.....ro­lls are what you eat at dinner. "Roles" are what people play in movies.