[Editor’s Note: Update x2 below!]
What was billed as “St. Louis’ Largest Tweetup Ever” fell a bit short on Friday…well, from what we hear, a lot short.
First, the backstory:
Tweetup (noun):
An organized or impromptu gathering of people that use Twitter. (A meet up of people that ‘tweet’ using Twitter.) [via Urban Dictionary]
News had been bubbling through the St. Louis hardcore Twitter crowd about an attempt by two twitters, @Rex7 and @Prebynski, to put together a “record breaking” Tweetup. Here are a few choice cuts from a pre-interview with @Rex7 about their plans on stlsocialmediareport.com:
What lead to the idea?
The last week has been very hot in St. Louis. What better way to celebrate Independence Day than to meet new people at McGurks?! Someone call the Guinness Book of World Records.
Do you think it will be the largest St. Louis Tweetup ever?
Yes. There is no question. People can invite anyone and everyone to come and have a good time. The Riverfront Times tweeted the event here.
Well, with all due respect to our friends at the Riverfront Times, them “re-tweeting” something doesn’t make it a lock, and I’d be willing to bet the RFT would agree.
Oh yeah, they even had a YouTube uploaded commercial for the damn thing on the upcoming page:
After all of this “publicity” we were eager to get down there and see the throngs of Twitter people! Sadly, we didn’t get to make it down to McGurks to see the action myself, but we did find someone that did. Todd Jordan is a System Analyst by day and Social Networking Maven all the time. If anyone would 1. be there, and 2. be able to tell us if it was the biggest ever, it would be Todd. We sent his few questions to see what he thought:
Punching Kitty.com: The first, most obvious question: Was it actually the “Largest St. Louis Tweeup Ever”?
Todd Jordan: This was not the largest tweetup ever, and not even in St. Louis. The recent Feraro’s Tweetup a couple of weeks ago was larger.
PK: How many people where there for the tweetup?
TJ: 19 that signed in. There may have been one or two more that didn’t.
PK: It was at McGurk’s on a friday night in addition to being a holiday weekend, there had to be lots of other people there that had no idea a Tweetup was going on, or even what a Tweetup is. Did that effect the mood or the level of interaction at all?
TJ: There were numerous people at McGurks that were not there for the tweetup. This didn’t affect the mood that I could tell. If anything, the group watching the game really pumped up the mood quite a bit.
PK: The 2 guys that planned this tweetup, are @Rex7 and @Prebynski (on Twitter) claim to have “the most followers in St. Louis” and the “most followers in Indianapolis,” respectively, and although I believe their claims, with numbers that high were you at all worried this was more of a promotional event to substantiate their arguably artificially high follower counts than it was about anything else?
TJ: I’ll say that the original announcement had the publicity event feel. Showing up there also gave me mixed feelings as they were clear about trying to make the Guiness Record Book for largest tweetup. Not sure that this even furthered networking in St. Louis at all.
PK: All in all, did you have fun?
TJ: I had a great time actually. Talked with new folks to me, and got to encourage along a couple of social networking newbies.
Yikes. So while 19 doesn’t sound like it could come close to any record other than maybe the largest ever meeting of attractive Winger fans, at least the few people there had a good time mixing with the regular McGurk’s crowd. I’m sure the two follower-hounds that put this together will find a way to make it seem bitchin’! [Editor’s Note: We are trying to bring “bitchin” back.] At some point I guess there are only so many automated auto-refollwing twitter accounts you can follow to get your “reach-around” number up, you gotta start throwing promotional parties huh?
Todd currently writes for his own blog, The Broad Brush, http://toddrjordan.com/thebroadbrush, and as a member of the Dadomatic, http://dadomatic.com, and Remarkable Parents, http://remarkableparents.com, blogging groups. His Twitter profile is @tojosan.
[Photo Credit: Todd Jordan http://www.flickr.com/photos/tojosan/3691600380/ ]
Update #1: Bill Streeter of the Riverfront Times also reported on this issue. His post is here.
Update #2: We got a response from one of the planners @Rex7! You can see that here: “Rex7 Responds to Stories About His Failed Tweetup Record“