The #HashJacking of #BR140

I had the great pleasure of attending the Brand Republic 'Winning Formulas To Maximise The Potential Of Twitter' workshop yesterday. They did a great pre-workshop job interacting with me and making sure I prepared for the day. The information booklet supplied was also very informative and I was particularly struck by the 'Participation and Interactivity' section which advised delegates Prepare; Be vocal!; Get chatting; and Let us know your thoughts.

Well here we go. The abiding memory for me apart from telling the guy from Kraft Foods to never, ever change the Cadbury's chocolate recipe was the hashjacking of the conference hashtag #BR140. I love these sort of hashtags, they allow you to connect with people on Twitter before an event and follow everyone's comments during and post an event. They also allow you to 'follow' the event on Twitter if you are not attending, enabling live updates from delegates, the event organisers and other people following. Some events, including this one, also have a live big screen 'Twitterfall' of all the tweets with the hashtag. Always very interesting and entertaining to see your own tweets on the big screen. Being an avid Twitterer I of course contributed to the hashtag with my own mix of pithy comment, useful insight and occassional drivel. For example, I was staggrered when the representative from the Labour Party referred to the 'right-wing Blogosphere' and tweeted accordingly.

Then the most amazing and I have to say hilarious thing happened after the mid-afternoon break, the #BR140 Twitter stream on the big screen started to be populated by hashjackers, with comments such as:-

#br140 Leave now and beat the queue for the urinal

I've dropped £20 somewhere around the 5th row, can anyone spot it? #br140

Let's forget all this boring Internet rubbish and just put our car keys in a big pot... #br140

Does anyone know if these Custard Creams are vegan-friendly? #br140

Can you help a brother out? I'm locked in the third cubicle of the gents with no paper. #br140

All this talk of SM is making me frisky, anyone for some S&M after hours? #br140

Check out the hashtag for the full stream. It was quite an experience, I was literally transfixed to my I-phone and the big screen as more and more jackers joined in and the comments got funnier and funnier. Eventually even pornbots started to contribute.

The switched on Twitterati amongst the audience could see this happening and were starting to chuckle and even the occasional belly laugh. I was literally doubled up in pain, eyes streaming close to cardiac arrest.

All the while a fairly low key panel discussion was taking place on stage, from the likes of Dell, a fashion shop, a taxi firm and the Dogs Trust (that's comedy gold in itself of course).

Then it struck me like a bolt of lightning, the hashjackers were social media and Twitter savvy way beyond the organisers and the panel. I was learning more from the jackers about the power, corruption and lies of Twitter than any of the panel could elucidate. To be fair to the organisers they handled the situation brilliantly, saw the funny side and counter tweeted to keep the delegates and followers of the hashtag onside.

BREvents: Thank you to all the speakers and delegates that attended #br140 & to the hackers for that stint of light entertainment!

So a few valuable lessons to be learned:

1. Moderate your #hashtag
2. Think carefully about having a Twitterfall
3. Make sure the event is truly engaging and interactive

We've all got a lot to learn about Twitter and Social Media, but it's here to stay, is irreverent, in your face and instant - brands need to be cognisant of this and will need a sense of humour to survive.

In a strange way the whole event reminded me of the original film of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three

Nostalgia's Not Like It Used To Be On Twitter

Being what might be described as a late adopter to Twitter (joining in February 2009) you'd think I'd be full of shiny, brand new, youthful enthusiasm for the micro-blogging service that's transforming how we, relate to, create, share and consume media content. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a great advocate and participator....but horror of horrors I seem to be inadvertently recycling my tweets from as far back as the halycyon days of summer 2009.

I like to think I'm a half decent tweeter and try to make them as original as possible, I must discard a third of them for being rubbish through an in-built quality control mechanism, but even so I'm occasionally re-quoting my own tweets.

Am I drying-up? or do I unconsciously consider certain tweets as holding some longer-term value and having something about them that needs to be recorded and etched in my and other people's consciousness for posterity, you know, like a poem, a lyric, or a comic's one-liner.

Far from being a throw-away microblogging service, Twitter is actually a history of everything I want to write down and communicate, some of which becomes iconic 'content' to be cherished and shared long after it was initially created.

With that thought in mind whose's up for lobbying Twitter for a royalty for every retweet - a penny sounds about right?