I believe that
Twitter played a significant role in my
success in
NetSquared's mashup contest. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows you to send out short messages to whoever wants to hear them. People the follow
Metro Mapper on Twitter get updates on what I am doing on a professional and personal level, and have access to links and ideas that don't make it into this blog.
One way I got the word out about the contest was by
using Twitter to post lots of announcements about the voting. And people who followed me on Twitter posted about the contest, which got their own group of users on the case.
NetSquared has not released the voting numbers, but based on the difficulty of the voting process, I wouldn't be surprised if I won with less than 200 votes total. Twitter is likely a large percentage of that number.
But the tipping point might have been
Jason Fall's
2000th tweet about voting for Metro Mapper in the contest. He jokingly proposed
pimping out his 2000th tweet for $5, and
I took him up on the experiment!
Here's a list of all the ways I got the word out about the contest. Each method got some number of eyes on the contest, and each propagated the word, somewhat virally, to people outside of the initial contact method.
Email, Phone, or In Person:
Fully Digital Announcements:
And, the only paid form of getting the word out,
$5 to Jason Falls for his
2000th Tweet:
- Jason Fall's Twitter followers
Since Jason had about 700 followers, even if a only a small percentage voted, it would have made a big difference. He posted a
detailed blog entry about the process, and sparked a great debate on the monetization of Twitter and the potential for paid advertising and sponsorship.
Thanks to the Twitter community for helping out Metro Mapper.
If you followed Jason or I on Twitter, and voted, please leave a short comment here so I can track and thank you. Jason's post generated a
number of great comments.
I've also posted this same article on my NetSquared
Project Blog so other projects can see the impact of Twitter and other ways I got the word out.