We kinda thought Twitter was popular enough and sold itself. What would be the point of promoting a free service that is revenue-less? More customers are just going to cost Twitter even more in bandwidth expenses and stuff like that.

That’s probably why the ad is so crap.

Last time we were in Joburg – we were shown the old one [which we first saw years ago] about 4 times in one day by some marketing folk who were just astounded by the statistics in this video.

Yes, if Facebook were a country it would be pretty big and 1 in 5 divorces are because of nude picture sharing on Twitter. But that doesn’t mean that starting a Facebook group for your company is going to solve any of your problems.

No sh*t Sherlock

All it means is that sharing your good news in a place that is so crowded, just made your job [as a marketing person] a whole lot harder. Get used to it.

Orange – the UK-based mobile phone giant – have employed an army of illustrators to produce personalised portraits for Twitterers.

If you want your very own portrait – describe yourself in a tweet using the hashtag #secretportraits before midnight of the 9th of December and see what you get back.

via

Steenberg Twitter tasters

We’re still staring lovingly at greasy, toasted cheese and ham sandwiches and neat espresso shots after last night’s Steenberg Twitter tasting. Wine tasting via a live Twitter feed is nothing new internationally, but it was one of the first times the idea had been put to the sword in South Africa and we were stoked to have been a part of it’s creation.

The conversation online was lively [more so the further down the range we got], and the feedback very useful for the Steenberg team.

The tasting pack

Tweet of the night came from @HarryReginald: Sipping on some Steenberg Semillon 09 Lovely waxy texture, taught acidity. Like tackling a girl in a tight dress onto a freshly waxed floor.

We didn’t realise that firing off more than a certain number of Tweets in an hour would overheat the system like a ceased, white-hot, glowing AK-47 barrel, but now we do.

Brad winding up the audience

The main reason for using Twitter was to open the Steenberg brand up to new audiences to enjoy and experience…and as a tool to do that, it was a great success. Here’s to more to come.

Our equipment setup last night

Check out more great pics [like these] and summary post from Cape Town Girl who was one of the organisers of a small, tight team to follow the action online.

Also check out Harry Reginald’s wicked blog post summary of the night. Great stuff.

Steenberg’s Twitter feed

Steenberg’s Twitpics

The ransom note

As part of their Valentine’s Day campaign, Woolies are running a Twitter-based competition which was promoted with in-store banners with one glarring error…

Oops

The web address on the posters www.woolieslovebird.co.za was clearly incorrect and was not registered by Woolies. Spotting the error the guys over at Yuppiechef [an online kitchen tool retailer] registered the domain and held the Woolies love birds for ransom.

The terms of the ransom?… [www.woolieslovebird.co.za]

To get it [the domain] back, and have us point the address to their competition asap, we’re asking Woolies to match, rand for rand, all donations made towards our 2010 charity, Soil for Life, between now and Valentines Day (and to be nice, we’ll put a limit of R5000 on it). Sound good? Excellent. So we invite all our fans to go ahead and donate R25 or more to support a great cause and make Woolies pay or the lovebirds get it

Thankfully Woolies are indeed playing along and are matching the donations rand for rand for Soil for Life.

Go donate R25 now.

Geek kouse

Looking like a tattoo, NOTCOT reports that an Isreali designer is now making Twitter Follow me socks / stockings.

These socks are made for tweeting

For us it seems like a bold, blanket invitation. Next step – Facebook underpants for blokes with the words Poke me printed on them. Should sell like a treat.

More over at NOTCOT

That's many minutes in Sydney

Virgin Australia are harnessing the power of Twitter in their latest brand building campaign.

It’s called 4320SYD. The basic idea is that three participants are flown from Los Angeles to Sydney with the goal of exploring the city over a 72 hour period with a camera crew, while using Twitter to update their progress every minute – all 4,320 of them. If they succeed, they each win round-the-world plane tickets.

The participants’ tweets are fed through to the campaign website, which features a ‘tweet wall’ of text and images that acts as a visual depiction of their Australian odyssey.

The three winning friends – Jade, Rob and Bobby – were chosen after they submitted an entry through describing why they deserved a three-day Australian holiday. The second place trio won a six-day holiday in the land of the wallaby. [just kidding]

The @4320SYD account will follow the trio’s Sydney adventure, which begins today.

4320SYD follows 4320LA, a campaign run by V Australia that sent three young Australians to Los Angeles to tweet nonstop for three days. Think of 4320SYD as the reverse.

Sounds a bit like the Amazing Race with a Twitter plugin. Nice!

[thanks Andrew]