As the great Lou Gehrig famously said on this day 70 years ago, “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” I probably wouldn’t go that far but I’ll continue to ride my little lucky streak as far as it will take me.
Twitter has been really, really good to me. I started using this about two years ago but I didn’t start using it full-time until about late last year. More recently as Twitter has become mainstream, bigger companies and corporations have started running PR contests and giveaways to get more followers and just get more publicity.
I should start off by saying that I have not had any help by another person in getting these answers and/or submitting them for me. It has mostly been a good combination of TweetDeck, Firefox and Google which have allowed me to succeed so far.
Here are my winnings so far (in order I won them, starting with the earliest):
[May 12, 2009]
1. The first thing I ever won on Twitter was a $10 Gift Certificate courtesy of @BaskinRobbins which was doing its 88 cent promotion Soft Serve promotion with a contest daily or twice a day. The question that I answered correctly figured to be a sports one and was
“What was the horse’s name that won the Kentucky derby in 1988?”
I would like to be able to say that I knew that off the top of my head that the winner was Winning Colors but let’s just leave it at a search engine helping me figure that one out.
[May 14, 2009]
2. Two days later, Angels and Demons movie account (@AandDMovie) ran a contest asking:
“What cam number are you looking at on AltarsOfScience.com?”
I am not sure if the camera number is still the same but it shows 84 right now and I think that was what I submitted. That ended up winning me a Making of Angels and Demons book which had behind the scene stills from the set and the green room in addition to descriptions about basically every scene in the movie. I was hoping it would be signed by Director Ron Howard as they had originally said but I won’t get too greedy.
[June 4, 2009]
3. My next two came at the hands of the @NBAStore during the Los Angeles Lakers and Orlando Magic series in the NBA Finals. The first question was:
“How about a giveaway? First 2 with correct answer win a $50 gc. How many times have the #Lakers been to the NBA Finals?”
This one I simply got lucky by looking at my computer the exact moment my TweetDeck updated with the latest tweets. I had been watching the game, playing some halo and talking to @imadjustin and @cellmonkey over XBox Live but had my laptop in front of me just in case. The answer of “30 times” I had heard earlier on in the week on SportsCenter didn’t even require a Google search and I felt good about my chances of winning a $50 Gift Certificate.
[June 14, 2009]
4. This was the second trivia question during the series and I am pretty sure I was in the same scenario of having my laptop ready while watching the game with a couple of friends. The question this time around was:
“Alright #giveaway time. A $100 online gift cert to NBAStore.com up for grabs. 6 #Lakers players have won the FINALS MVP award. Name them.”
The answer being: Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and Shaquille O’Neal. I was certain on 5 out of the 6 and would have definitely missed James Worthy had the question not said name 6 MVPs. Luckily there are plenty of Lakers fan out there (not me) that have websites devoted to who won the award and when in quite a convenient list format.
There was a slight confusion when the winner was announced as @sahyder1 and publicly awarded him the $100 GC. I was certain I had submitted my answer before him and @NBAStore was pretty cool about admitting their mistake and gave me a code as well via Direct Message.
[June 22, 2009]
5. This one I will gladly take because I am such a fan of the Science Channel and anything related to outer space. @ScienceChannel gave away 50 Spaceman stress relievers. I had originally missed their message but saw a RT from @mrothb and I was fortunate enough to get one as well. So thanks Matt!
First 50 RT’s get a spaceman! Ever wonder what planet is your perfect match? Video fun for #SpaceWeek http://ow.ly/fy1o
[July 3, 2009]
6. Last but definitely not least would be me winning a pair of Yankee tickets from WFAN 660 (@wfan660) and Craig Carton (@cc660). Carton had previously tweeted that the question was going to be Derek Jeter related, so naturally I had his career statistics page opened up on the great Baseball-Reference website. However, the question threw me off:
What movie did derek jeter appear in with roger clemens in 2003 and what tv show was he on once in 2001? Good luck.
Luckily for the Internet Movie Database (aka IMDB) which seems to have an answer for any and everything that ever hit the big screen theater or just the little screen television… even professional athletes making guest appearances or hosting tv shows.
The movie as my brother pointed to me as well was Anger Management something that was clearly listed for 2003 on IMDB but the tv show was tricky. I wasn’t sure if SNL would count but I really couldn’t find anything else that would qualify. Almost admitting to myself that I was not going to win this one, I sent him the answer of Anger Management and Saturday Night Live. In less than a minute, I had a response back saying
congrats u r the winner i will be in touch on monday
Now the waiting game continues until Monday but that’s a game I’ll gladly play.
Earlier this week, the Stevens Athletics Department launched its own