Yesterday we attempted to solve the admittedly self-generated mystery of whether Will Smith was on Twitter (we concluded that he wasn't). Not only did this minor obsession lead to a Will Smith dream last night (we were on the set of his Spike Jonze-directed video, while Will hugged us the entire time), but today, Smith popped up again with the announcement the he's decided his next film will be Men in Black 3D. Naturally, we checked fake Will Smith's Twitter page to see if he was committed enough to tweet the news. He wasn't, but what we found was far more intriguing: "on the phone with @willferrell he told me to tell ya'll he just signed up on twitter. Follow him ya'll." Aaaaah!

Was it possible that the other famous Will had just started a Twitter account? Maybe. The page's background was an official-looking skin of Ferrell and a bikini-clad Heidi Klum taken from a Sports Illustrated shoot, and the lone tweet was funny and ambiguous enough that it might actually be the real thing: "@the_real_shaq made me sign up." Tumbling further down the online rabbit hole, we discovered something rather odd, a video on ESPN.com from 2009 titled "Recruiting Will Ferrell to Twitter" (which you can see here).Say what now? The video itself proved to be even more bizarre.

In it, an ESPN correspondent interviews USC Trojans head coach Pete Carroll about, yes, trying to convince Will Ferrell to join Twitter. On why Ferrell hadn't joined up yet, Carroll says, "I think he's got his own thought about a new way of doing the whole Twitter world. I think he's afraid to take the big plunge. I think he wants do something unique on his own, but we're not letting him do it. We're bringing him in." He went on to say that Ferrell would be "one of the all-timers if we can get him hooked up."

So, after a year, has Ferrell finally cracked under the pressure of Carroll and his crew? (After just one tweet, @willferrell already has almost 700 followers). We all know that Will Ferrell is very active online, and it was only a matter of time before he joined the social networking site, which seems to be a rite of passage for comedians these days. Whatever the case, two things are certain: 1) We need to spend less time on the internet, and 2) we'll be seeing Will Ferrell in our dreams tonight. Looking forward to it!