Setting Out for a Win- The #TwitClan Way @ expōnere

Setting Out for a Win- The #TwitClan Way

Posted on June 14th, 2010 barneyc 52 comments

UPDATE 18:56 June 14th – I have removed the screen capture from Prestige Gamerz website on request by their administrator. I have, of course, kept screen captures of source entries for all quoted text and PGz entries.

For those that follow me on Twitter I hereby formally apologise for bombarding your stream with assorted #mkop-twitclan messages all last week. But I have a story to tell which hopefully may cut me some slack.

It’s June 4th and I received heads up that Microsoft was running a competition via their MyKindofPhone website that held a lot of promise. Basically they were offering up a prize that any gamer would love;

If you can build the biggest and best gamer clan on Twitter, you and 15 friends could win a big screen gaming experience in London. You’ll get a private cinema with games consoles and the game of your choice ready to play, food, drinks, and we’ll screen one of the best gamer films of all time.

Essentially the competition was to utilise the power of word of mouth marketing by having the entrants get their contacts to tell other people about what Microsoft were doing. Simple and potentially cost effective marketing.

For those that haven’t previously noticed I’ve been playing Xbox 360 games with a bunch of fellow Twitterers . Founded earlier in the year by Kip Hakes partly as we had things in common workwise, partly because it gave us a great way to augment our 140 character existence with real voices and build up a set of more meaningful friendships. For those who were around you may remember us as #TwitMW2Frenzy, but honestly that’s just too long for a hashtag. Nowadays we are to be found under #twitclan or on Xbox Live as [twit].

I dutifully entered the #TwitClan, knocked out a couple of starter tweets and sat back.

And that was my mistake. I presumed that with 6 other people also helping and over 800 people following me that the re-tweets would flow and it would be job done. Not so. At all.

Sure we took an early lead but then another clan entered the race, one with purpose. The PGz clan were coming directly from a gaming website. I have no idea how many members they have but it became apparent a couple of days before the competition closed on Friday 11th that it was more than our lowly 6 or 7 as they had come from nowhere to steal the lead. Fair play to them, they posted calls to arms on their forums and their members responded.

PGz has just entered a competition where 15 of us could win the chance to spend the day gaming in our own private cinema on the big screen!

Prize – If you can build the biggest and best gamer clan on Twitter, you and 15 friends could win a big screen gaming experience in London. You’ll get a private cinema with games consoles and the game of your choice ready to play, food, drinks, and we’ll screen one of the best gamer films of all time.

All we have to do is Tweet the following on Twitter -

#mkop-PGz FTW! PGz demand to win the gaming experience of a lifetime!

Just copy and paste it and Tweet it!

If we win and I believe we have a very good chance, then the lucky 15 PGz members who wish to go will have their names drawn out of a hat in a ‘live’ draw by our very own Axikal!

@gosu71 (http://prestigegamerz.com/forum.html?func=view&catid=1&id=92817)

Unfortunately in the process of jumping ahead a few of their number had talked about “spamming the hell out of this” and also offered up competition prizes of their own in return for help winning which were both at best unsportsmanlike but bordered on breaking the competition rules. We had a wee moan amongst ourselves but decided to get serious about the whole thing.

In a very brief discussion it was clear that we actually had easy access to a very substantial user base by way of one of our member’s own website. David Carrington is the owner and developer behind Dabr, a very popular web-based Twitter client used by tens of thousands of people from their mobile phones around the world.

David being a very sensible kind of chap made a call to stick a message on the Dabr website asking for help from his users. More importantly he showed immense commonsense by;
- doing it in such a way as to only display the message in off-peak times so as not to bombard Twitter with thousands of promotional messages (which may have broken the ToS for Twitter and thus the rules of teh competition),
- making the link ONLY repopulate a re-tweet dialog so that users were fully aware and in control – no auto-bots or privacy issues here thanks, and
- having the whole thing stop asking prior to the competition end so that the overspill was better contained.
All in all a very shrewd set of measures to ensure not only the integrity of Dabr but also so as not to overstep the mark when it came to the rules of the competition. I will stick my own hand up here to claim ownership of getting both David and another #twitclan member, Matt Jones, to take a number of screenshots of webpage’s and source code at this point knowing full well such a move was going to get us noticed.

Within hours of going live it was pretty obvious that it was likely to be a winning move as the sheer volume of support re-tweets was incredible. Sure there was the occasional duplicate but when they were coming through on the last night at a couple a minute the number of unique messages was also bound to be high.

We rocketed from 71 odd tweets on the Thursday lunchtime to hundreds by the following morning. This of course resulted in an outpouring of general name calling from our only real competitor at the time (#PGz). I don’t think I’ve ever been called out for cheating so many times in my life. Their annoyance was understandable, they were set for a fail.

The thing is/was that our call for help via Dabr was actually little more than #PGz’s intial call on their own forums, it was just that we chose a site with a bigger audience. Given the intention of the competition was to drive attention to Microsoft and that it clearly wanted to see as much chatter on Twitter as possible accusations of cheating as only tweets from Clan members should be counted clearly didn’t hold water (of course there is also the argument that why on Earth would anyone from a small Clan enter if only member tweets would be counted – it would be fait accompli for any large group).

At 12pm on Friday 11th June Dabr breathed it’s last cry for help and we sat back (again), only this time having monitored the opposition and feeling more than a little confident.

The competition closed at 2pm and for over two and a half hours everyone waited for the count. #TwitClan polled 746 unique user re-tweets (from 71 the day before) based on over 1,400 total in our support. We were declared the winners.

I won’t cover all the subsequent silliness from various people, it doesn’t help. The rules were really simple, we stuck to them, pulled some very basic marketing and won through.

What we would have / could have done differently:

1) David is the first to admit he didn’t pay much attention to the close date for a few days, otherwise he’d have set Dabr running from day 1 resulting in an overwhelming win from the outset. This might have meant a little less name calling.

2) We could have leveraged a number of other well visited sites and Twitter clients, a few Facebook pages – you know all that good social media stuff. Given more time to prepare I’m confident we could have knocked out well in excess of 10k unique’s over the competition week.

3) Not even tried to communicate with the opposition. In hindsight all our efforts to placate their concerns did little more than fuel their suspicions. Hence this post and it’s setting out of our tactics.

Next Time: The Fun Begins

events, my writings #twitclan, marketing, xbox360
- Rob
  
  Biggest load of ** censored for profanity **i've ever read in my entire life. This competition is more 'fishy' than Grimsby docks.Now if you excuse me, I have a gaming site, made by gamers and for gamers, to run.
- Tweets that mention Setting Out for a Win- The #TwitClan Way | expōnere — Topsy.com
  
  [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Abul Hussain, munkimatt, Kip Hakes, Barney Craggs, Barney Craggs and others. Barney Craggs said: Setting Out for a Win- The #TwitClan Way http://ff.im/-m2kw7 [...]
- Rob
  
  Biggest load of bollocks i've ever read in my entire life. This competition is more 'fishy' than Grimsby docks.Now if you excuse me, I have a gaming site, made by gamers and for gamers, to run.
- jon
  
  i thought that the competition was for gaming clans. why did you involve an external client just to boost yourselves? now if you will excuse me, i have a gaming website, made for the gamer by the gamer to return to.
- barneyc
  
  Well I tried people, I tried. End of.
- barneyc
  
  I'll leave the comments open in the interest of transparency (which appears to mean little to some) BUT offensive, abusive or threatening comments will at best be edited, at worst blocked and reported.
- Rob
  
  Can the 'moderator' kindly remove the screenshot of my website. I don't remember being asked permission.
- barneyc
  
  Happy to and will seek counsel on this, however suspect that it would bedeemed “Fair Use”http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p09…
- David Carrington
  
  I thought that the competition was for Twitter gaming clans. Why did you involve an external forum just to boost yourselves? Now if you excuse me, I have a Twitter website, made for Twitter users by the Twitter user to return to.As you see, your argument isn’t all that strong.
- BarneyC
  
  @gosu71 Consider it done. Counsel suggests that a quote and URL would provide a more appropriate method of conveying the information.
- munkimatt
  
  There's a heavy amount of quivering bottom lips going on here. Hell hath no fury like a gamer scorned. Their sense of entitlement both baffles and amuses me.
- barneyc
  
  @gosu71 Image removed. Counsel suggested a text quote and URL would provide a more appropriate conveyance of information.
- Mark
  
  You realise that the negativity has been from just a few members, when the site has over a thousand?
- barneyc
  
  I think the problem Mark is just that. Unfortunately those few include youradministrators who are representing the forum as a whole.It's a shame and I personally have extended thanks and offers of match-upsto some.I guess the #twitclan are all very similar and have a great deal ofcommonality whereas with over a thousand you of course have a much broadercross section of people.Thanks for the message and do feel free to connect.
- Mark
  
  Well, as another Administrator, I'm sorry that that's how the site came across.
- Adam
  
  What you are missing is the PGz is not just a web site but it is also a clan. Sometime i have seen people with the PGz clan tag on, mainly on MW 2. I think the people voting for PGz had some link with the website not using a external client to bump up there number. Most of the people voting Twit clan cant of had a big link with the clan it self unlike the other clans.And am sorry 71 to over 700 is a bit far fetched. Anyway enjoy you day in london
- It Box @ All Around the World News
  
  Auto Volume Control…I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog …
- Adam
  
  What you are missing is the PGz is not just a web site but it is also a clan. Sometime i have seen people with the PGz clan tag on, mainly on MW 2. I think the people voting for PGz had some link with the website not using a external client to bump up there number. Most of the people voting Twit clan cant of had a big link with the clan it self unlike the other clans.And am sorry 71 to over 700 is a bit far fetched. Anyway enjoy you day in london
- Sean Mates
  
  Your write up it gives the impression that something I said 'spamming the hell out of this' contributed to you having a 'wee moan amongst yourselves' and 'getting serious about the whole thing'. I would like to point out that the comment I made was actually only made a few hours before the comp ended. And so can in no way be linked to you turning to Dabr to get serious about winning this. You were hammering Dabr at least 24 hours before I even made that comment.I hope that helps.
- loudmouthman
  
  What was I getting the blame for ?
- barneyc
  
  Thanks Sean we will. There will be plenty of pics and such post the event, after all the whole thing is really about creating more buzz around Microsoft's phones and Xbox.
- Sean Mates
  
  Have you decided what games you'll be playing?
- barneyc
  
  Still up for grabs at the moment but I suspect there will be some Modern Warfare 2 and some Red Dead Redemption (horses at life size will be odd). Other than those two Blur could be fun. Of course it will depend a lot on what Microsoft front up with.
- barneyc
  
  Nothing, YET! Why do you want to admit something here and now Nick?
- Jon
  
  unlike your site sir, our forum is an integral part of our community and clan. unlike your site, which had little to no direct interaction with the clan. as you see, your argument isn't all that strong.
- Mark
  
  One thing that we were pondering when we thought we had a chance of winning was how the system would work in a cinema. Would you be looking at split screen gaming, LAN, etc?
- barneyc
  
  Totally agree, we've had a similar discussion. The practicalities ofnetworking, splitting the projector inputs and such are easy enough – hellany of us could provide solid mobile broadband if needed.But split screen play has to be 100% absorbing otherwise i) you getdistracted by the other's “screen” and ii) with games like MW2 it all gets alittle easy if you can actually see where the other playing is – especiallyfor those camping.Not sure.Certainly think any driving or flying games would work well single playermind you.
- Mark
  
  Certainly, screen watching has proved to be a problem in games like Mw2. I tend to prefer more casual shooters, if you will, like TimeSplitters, where it's not really a problem.Anoher thought was a simple hot-seat endeavour with a fighting game such as Street Fighter.
- barneyc
  
  Never really got my head around the Street Fighter side-on beat-em-up games. Even back in the 80's just found those combo's too hard to pull off.Maybe we'll get lucky and MS will front up with some Kinect goodness for usto play with.
- Sean Mates
  
  Guitar Hero in a cinema, everyone on a instrument, volume right up, wow!!
- David Carrington
  
  Thankfully, my opinion is backed up by the people running the competition
- Abul
  
  You'd still lose mate! SSFIV tournament would be a good idea IMO.
- Mark
  
  Also makes me wonder if downloadable games is included. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix is still the best fighting game on the market, for my money.
- Mark
  
  Not that that was relevant to the question or anything…
- David Carrington
  
  Sorry – I only just realised that my paraphrased mockery to his original question may have been taken as anything other than rhetorical. The answer to both questions is simple: the nature of the sites involved makes no difference whatsoever.
- munkimatt
  
  Personally was hoping for a NES and some Spy vs Spy but I think I may be out of luck on that one.
- James Whatley
  
  Aww… sore little loser. Bless.
- James Whatley
  
  Good words Mark.
- James Whatley
  
  Barney, I think this is a really well-structured article that explains the twitclan side openly and transparently. In all honesty, you've won – so you could argue that this post is actually unnecessary. It's a testament to the clan's integrity that you took this step to 'clear your name'.Good job.
- James Whatley
  
  Aww… sore little loser. Bless.
- James Whatley
  
  Good words Mark.
- James Whatley
  
  Barney, I think this is a really well-structured article that explains the twitclan side openly and transparently. In all honesty, you've won – so you could argue that this post is actually unnecessary. It's a testament to the clan's integrity that you took this step to 'clear your name'.Good job.
- James Whatley
  
  Now *that* is an idea!
- James Whatley
  
  TimeSplitters is a fantastic shout.
- Tweets that mention http://www.exponere.com/2010/setting-out-for-a-win-the-twitclan-way/#comment-56811487?utm_source=pingback — Topsy.com
  
  [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by . said: [...]
- barneyc
  
  Hey Mark – any chance you might drop me an email to the address at the top?
- waveydavey001
  
  I've only just caught up with this. Sort of amusing so don't worry about it too muchThe reason why I find it amusing is twofoldFirstly I follow a lot of the Twitclanners, am a daily (throughout the day) user of Twitter and an occasional user of Dabr and yet I wasn't one of those 746. I therefore (a) surmize that there was no spamming or even over exhuberent advertising of this competition (b) apologise for not voting for youSecondly I think it seems highly appropriate to use Twitter (and twitter based clients) for a Twitter competition. I'm guessing that was kind of the point of the Competition, for microsoft to reach a huge audience. It is only this 'controversy' that has drawn my attention to it LOLWell done guys.
- waveydavey001
  
  I've only just caught up with this. Sort of amusing so don't worry about it too muchThe reason why I find it amusing is twofoldFirstly I follow a lot of the Twitclanners, am a daily (throughout the day) user of Twitter and an occasional user of Dabr and yet I wasn't one of those 746. I therefore (a) surmize that there was no spamming or even over exhuberent advertising of this competition (b) apologise for not voting for youSecondly I think it seems highly appropriate to use Twitter (and twitter based clients) for a Twitter competition. I'm guessing that was kind of the point of the Competition, for microsoft to reach a huge audience. It is only this 'controversy' that has drawn my attention to it LOLWell done guys.
- #Twitclan Get Playtime Thanks to @MyKindofPhone | expōnere
  
  [...] Setting Out for a Win- The #TwitClan Way [...]
- #Twitclan Get Playtime Thanks to @MyKindofPhone | expōnere
  
  [...] Setting Out for a Win- The #TwitClan Way [...]
- http://adonisdemon.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/twitclan-meet-meeting-twitclanners/ Twitclan Meet – Meeting Twitclanners « AdonisDemon
  
  [...] group recently won a competition to have a day of cinema gaming for it’s members via Microsoft’s MyKindofPhone. A full [...]
- http://rantabul.us/2010/08/03/twitclan-meet-meeting-twitclanners/ Twitclan Meet – Meeting Twitclanners « RantAbul.us
  
  [...] group recently won a competition to have a day of cinema gaming for it’s members via Microsoft’s MyKindofPhone. A full [...]

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Setting Out for a Win- The #TwitClan Way

UPDATE 18:56 June 14th – I have removed the screen capture from Prestige Gamerz website on request by their administrator. I have, of course, kept screen captures of source entries for all quoted text and PGz entries.

What we would have / could have done differently:

Next Time: The Fun Begins

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Setting Out for a Win- The #TwitClan Way

UPDATE 18:56 June 14th – I have removed the screen capture from Prestige Gamerz website on request by their administrator. I have, of course, kept screen captures of source entries for all quoted text and PGz entries.

What we would have / could have done differently:

Next Time: The Fun Begins

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