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This weekend micro-blogging became the playground of two of the UK’s most famous businessmen as Duncan Bannatyne and Peter Jones took over Twitterville.
Friday started as usual, with a flurry of tweets about the impending weekend and the regular #ff.
For those not quite up-to-speed with all things Twitter, Follow Friday (#ff) is a weekly event where you recommend people you follow, to people who follow you. All you need to do is link to their name and add the #ff hashtag. Easy-peasy.
However this week, Dragon's Den stalwart Duncan Bannatyne decided to take Follow Friday one step further. And it all started with one tweet:
DuncanBannatyne: I would like to #ff all of my followers – start following each other then we will all have 90,000 follwers. Simples
The idea was clearly flawed.
Adding so many people would take rather longer than most of us have to spare on a Friday afternoon, a problem that was soon picked up:
RT @iancreek: @DuncanBannatyne What an excellent idea, I’ll start following your followers now. Should be all done by Christmas!
But Duncan hasn’t got to where he is now by being beaten by such trivialities. A few tweets later and a new hashtag had been created. #duncansdream was born.
Fast forward a few hours later and #duncansdream was the number one trending topic in the UK, it even took over #oilspill on a global level. Mass confusion followed. At this stage, I'll admit to being one of the confused.
The idea, as far as I can work out, is that people were encouraged to follow those who had included #duncansdream to their tweets. Drastically increasing followers in a matter of hours (but with significantly less effort than adding 90,000 new people).
Still with me?
One man who did get it, was Peter Jones. Not to be out trended #peterspeople was created. Clearly in a bid to beat his Dragon rival.
By Saturday afternoon, both #duncansdream and #peterspeople were the top two trending topics in the UK.
Never since Darth met Luke has such a battle been witnessed by so many.
Duncan, of course had a head start, but the young contender made up ground fast. Although it seems, that in the end, the Scot was just too strong for the Englishman (sorry- couldn’t resist).
Fast forward to Monday afternoon and #duncansdream is still trending, and the exercise it seems, is a success.
From a b2b perspective I’ve no conclusions to draw. Other than in the world of social media, it seems that the simplest of ideas can create a global craze in a matter of hours. And with a plethora of new followers and conversations, everyone it seems, is a winner.
Well everyone except Pete.
