Several months ago, Moonfruit, a free website builder, made a splash on Twitter by giving away ten free Macintosh computers in ten days. They ran their contest by co-opting the hashtag functionality on Twitter. This second-hand spam technique was very effective in one sense. A tweetload of people wrote #moonfruit a twitzillion number of times, and it was the top trending topic for about a week.
While I can partially agree with those who say this is effective Twitter promotion, I want to discuss how mere effective promotion can be a defective goal. Effective Twitter promotion does not automatically translate into any real return on influence. Even though Moonfruit got a momentary spike for their brand, this contest failed to build any relationship.
*This title is just a joke. We are not giving away any fruit of any kind, Moonfruit or otherwise.