It was an interesting Boxing Day on Twitter, and if you even checked out your timeline at any time during the day you most likely saw ‘@skydiver‘ appearing.  On this day after Christmas Peter Shankman continued something he started on the day before Christmas with the intention of clearing the piles of SWAG from his office by playing “Twitter Trivia”, however this suddenly took off into a huge event with the help of the PR Rep of OGIO who wanted to give away a bag.  As he wasn’t able to clear his office on Wednesday with all the new products being offered as a result of OGIO, the trivia was extended out until Boxing Day.  When news of the Boxing Day event started to get around late on the day before Christmas, even more companies started to line up with products to donate for the event.  These companies ranged from the large like OGIO and SanDisk to smaller companies like Hooray for the Underdog, and ImageGlow Candles as well as folks offering business coaching and other types of services.  This is just a small sample of what was available and the dollar value was in the five figure amount.  Even through Christmas you would see an occasional tweet by Shankman saying something else had been added to the list.

Starting off in the New York City morning he slowly started offering trivia questions through Twitter.  As I woke up in the Mountain Time Zone I started seeing a few hours of prizes go out the door as he asked various types of trivia.  Some questions could easily be found on Google, another question involved looking at an entry from the lone Help a Reporter Out (HARO) e-mail which went out midday to the subscribers of this free product.  In the afternoon he asked us  to find the 18th word on the Savvy Auntie website, and of course more complex questions as well.  At times people objected to the answer he was looking for saying it was wrong, but in the end he usually prevailed as the Quizmeister.

As I got some work done and watched along during the day it was interesting to see the impact this “Twitter Trivia” had on the community.  You could see the followers for @skydiver grow during the day as word continued to get around of this event taking place.  Peter mentioned on his website earlier in the week he grew by 400 followers in around 30 minutes when the event was first mentioned.  Even though today was a holiday for most, you could easily see a hundred answers come flying in from those playing along and at certain times even more than that.  When giving out two copies of the book “Twitter Means Business” the question to win was what newspaper does the author @jojeda work.  This information was on his Twitter page and I stayed on that page to refresh and watch the number of followers increase over the course of minutes.  If the question pertained to finding something on a website if you jumped to that site it was obvious the spikes in traffic were significant as the sites would crawl at time.  Peter mentioned at the end of the event that he was getting feedback that the traffic jumps were indeed some of the best ever for some businesses offering products.

The one item which changed everything is when @brianshaler connected up Shankman’s apartment with a live video feed about ten hours into the event so you could watch as they dispensed prizes.  All of a sudden the event became even more real, and having just seen EdTV recently on television it brought back memories of that movie.  As you became more involved in what was happening it was much more difficult to let go.  This was not only due to the thought of winning something, but also with how well Peter and Brian worked together bringing the event to life.  Even though they had only met a few hours earlier how they were able to play off of each other made it seem like they were friends for quite a while.  With the two of them providing some entertainment the flow of prize giveaways slowed but the interest peaked even more as the question was what would they do or say next.

As the final giveaway (4 days 3 nights lodging in either Reno, Sparks, North Lake Tahoe or South Lake Tahoe, lift tickets and more) provided by flyrenotahoe approached it was a concern of finding a question which would not bring objections from those playing along since it was a sizeable prize. Which did go off initially with a hitch, but once a new question was asked a winner was determined and everyone walked away happy.

I found the day interesting as Social Media was utilized in a new method during “Twitter Trivia”.  Using his already large base of followers as a result of HARO, Peter was able to build buzz about the event of the day.  As people re-tweeted the details of the event, businesses signed up to offer products as it was only costing them the cost of product but giving them a huge technology savvy audience.  While it is unknown how many people were following and sending in answers, as I look on TwitScoop right now six hours after the event ended I am still seeing trending topics which were answers to trivia questions.  It is not everyday Voltaire is a trending topic on Twitter.  Peter mentioned he would write a blog post about the events of Boxing Day after getting some rest, so it will be good to here his thoughts and how this shows the promise of Social Media to companies who can embrace the technology.

In case you were wondering if I won anything.  I did indeed win an OGIO bag for knowing about the 19 hour AOL outage and quickly getting my answer into Twitter. But even winning the bag, I was hooked and continued to follow as well as learn about new products as well as other interesting people to follow on Twitter, just like the sponsoring companies would like.