The results are in, and let me tell you… this was tough.
Just to review, the idea behind the Twitter Writing Contest was simple… compose a story in exactly 140 characters and post it on Twitter. I want to thank everyone who participated, because there are a ton of talented writers out there (even at 140 characters)!
Let me introduce the judges real fast before we proceed:
- Lisa Hoover – Senior Editor at Linux.com and blogger for Weblogs, Inc. and the GigaOM network.
- Tamar Weinberg – Social media power user and blogger/consultant for Lifehacker, Search Engine Roundtable, and Mashable.
- Chris Garrett – New media consultant, authority blogging expert, and co-author of Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.
- Darren Rowse – Some guy in Australia.
- Oh, and me… some guy not even cool enough to be in Australia.
If there’s one thing all the judges agree on, it’s that there were way too many great submissions for this to be an easy exercise. Voting was incredibly tight among the top tier of submissions.
We could have easily had 10 or more winners, but instead chose to expand the winner pool to five. So, there remains first, second and third places, plus two honorable mentions that will also receive prizes from late donors.
So here we go.
First Place:
“Time travel works!” the note read. “However you can only travel to the past and one-way.” I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill.
Ron is the lucky winner of the following swag:
- An 8 GB iPod Touch thanks to the generosity of Start Cooking; plus…
- $100 iTunes gift certificate to get you rolling courtesy of John Cow (also check out his Cowpetition for a chance to win $3,000 in other prizes); plus…
- Three months access to Aaron Wall’s SEO Training Program; plus…
- Full access pass to BlogWorld 2008.
Second Place:
Tony was a snitch, so I wasn’t surprised when his torso turned up in the river. What did surprise me, though, was where they found his head.
Anthony scores the following stuff for his story:
- 4 GB iPod Nano courtesy of the Ajax Whois domain name service; plus…
- $50 Amazon gift card courtesy of Planet Chiropractic; plus…
- One full year of Business Plan web hosting, one domain name, and one WordPress installation courtesy of eVentureBiz; plus…
- Better Business Blogging: The Simple 4 Step System to Attract, Sell and Profit through Smart Blogging (includes ebook, audio, transcripts and critiques of 6 business blogs).
Third Place
When Gibson hit that homerun in the fall of eighty-eight, my old man had never been so happy. He hugged me for the first time. I was eleven.
Sorry, no jazz recordings, Thelonius. But we do have these other cool prizes for you:
- Online Reputation Management ebook from Glen Allsopp; plus…
- A 1-hour phone consultation with Confidential Hollywood Script Consultant Blair Richwood (Pretty Woman, Beaches, What About Bob?, etc.) on any part of film/TV writing you might be interested in; plus…
- Landing Page Optimization ebook from Invesp Consulting; plus…
- Four life coaching sessions from Professional Life Coach Tim Brownson; plus…
- One month of First Blog Media’s professional podcasting service; plus…
- A 6-session course from Link to Your Education entitled “Overview of Online Business Networking;” plus…
- 50 individual custom postcards from PostcardPerfect.
First Honorable Mention:
Happily sobbing she held the boy, her memory of his violent conception falling away. She had learned to love him, this would be her revenge.
Melissa wins a freshly donated copy of the premium Thesis Theme for WordPress from Chris Pearson.
Second Honorable Mention:
The priest at the funeral home asked if she had been a loving mother. The children all stared at each other. The silence spoke volumes.
Derek wins a signed copy of Hypnotic Writing from Joe Vitale.
Congratulation once again to all the winners, thanks to everyone who submitted an entry, and special thanks to Lisa, Tamar, Chris and Darren for helping me with this tough (but enjoyable) task.
Winners, please contact me via email for information on collecting your prizes.
P.S. If you want to see a collection of most of the entries, check out the hard work done by Daniel Smith to create slideshows of the submissions.
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{ 47 comments… read them below or add one }
Aww, I thought mine was funny enough to stroke a chord in the minds of my judges.
Perhaps another time.
Thanks for letting me play, was fun.
Congratulations to the winners! I can’t imagine how tough it was to decide, with so many excellent stories.
In case folks missed my post on the original thread, I combined all the valid contest entries in a couple slideshows here. So if you want to do some light reading, head over and check out just how stiff the competition was.
Thanks for holding such a fun contest Brian!
Daniel Smith
Smithereens Blog
Bummed not to have won, but thoe are great! I’m impressed.
Brian:
Congrats on a smart and fun promotional contest.
Best always,
- Peter
3rd place and the 2nd Honorable mentions were bone-chilling.
Good times Brian.
Not to be whatever, but you could have gotten a lot more contests and drove traffic if you had spread out some of your prizes over more than just this one contest!
I think the generosity was awesome, but you could have capitalized on it. Just think – 4 or 5 more contests – tons more buzz…just a thought!
Congrats to the winners. It’s nice to know that I lost to some really great stuff
Very cool – great stories, all.
Looking forward to finding time to at least sampling the vast multitude of stories…
Am I the only one here who thinks Brian’s description of Darren Rowse as “some guy in Australia
” is absolutely LMFAOAROFL-worthy? 
)
Wow, these are all so good. There were a lot of really strong entries, kudus to everyone who played!
@Daniel Smith, I love the slide show you did for the entries, very cool indeed.
Kudus? What are kudus? Make that kudos.
Lots of endings and lots of gunshots – and thanks Daniel, for the TwitLit slideshow. Fun to watch.
It honors me to be able to copywrite a Copyblogger post.
Brian, you said, “hear we go”. May I correct you and say it should’ve been “here we go”?
(Check just above the first place blockquote.)
Wonderful entries all!
I loved this whole concept and the contest. Really appreciated @Daniel Smith’s slide show too! Thanks for including our Better Business Blogging program as a prize for the second place winner. We look forward to connecting with Anthony.
Second place was my fav…
Congratulations to the winners
Congrats to the winners. And now, a moment of silence for the late donors.
…
I’m also glad to know that I lost to these great entries. I thought mine was decent, I wonder where I ranked. Top 400 I hope.
Good stuff! And great choices. I can see why I didn’t win
Delighted to be a prize sponsor of such a clever contest — judging must’ve been a blast (and difficult — these winners were A-list!) Let’s make this annual.
A great display of using CHOICE in writing; you can SEE every scene these winners paint. Perfect proof that “Evocative Economy” is a valuable skill, a useful talent, and a joy to read whether in sales copy, infotainment, fiction or screenplays. Bravo!
Wonderful stories!! Kudos to the winners. I especially liked the time travel one.
Barbara
Congratulations to all of the winners! How fantastic and fun this was.
Thanks to Brian, the judges, and copyblogger.com for this wonderful idea.
I hope we will see another contest in the future, because it was a blast, and actually put a fire under me to start writing again.
Thanks to everyone who contributed. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your entries.
Brian, I do believe the contest entry was your highest commented post yet, right?
Shows the power of contests and social media tools.
Buck
ps. Ron Gould. Nice work, but if you’re the same Ron Gould of terraflora, I’d make sure your twitter info lists this. Don’t miss the link juice this contest win will get you?
congratulations! #1 is by far my favourite, totally awesome.
Wow, those are some great stories! I love #1 and #3 the most. I can see why mine didn’t stand a chance.
Congrats to the winners, and thank you to Brian and all of the judges for this fun contest!
Wow! Those are some amazing entries. Each one of those stories definitely deserved to be a winner.
wow finally the list of winners are here
too bad i did not make it 
hehehe
Yes, congrats to the winners and I still think it was just an absolutely fun contest that really gets the creative juices going and by the response in the comments of the original contest post it was incredible. Fun stuff to read.
Great contest … congrats to the winners. And let us know when we’ll do this again
those were SO fun to read!!!! Let’s see, the one I want to read is…hmm…I want to read the “violent onception” one. Also the funeral one. Wow everyone, that was fun.
Those were awesome entries by everyone. Congratulations to the winners. Nice work!
You all need to join the Tweet140 Club at http://www.tweet140.com/
Wow, they are so good! Congratulations.
p.s. Submit comment button is a bit messed up (Camino Mac OS X – it’s outlined and there’s a text word “submit” over the image), don’t know if it’s always like that, don’t remember commenting before.
A huge thank you to everyone involved. After seeing some of the other winners, I feel very lucky to have been selected. This would have been fun even without the prizes…but the prizes make it even better!
Congrats to the winners and the runner ups and all the others who got creative and chugged out some awesome stories.
Thanks to Daniel and hit TwitLit we can see them forever now.
First place was fantastic – a deserving winner!
Congrats winners!
And thanks to Brian — that was certainly a fun challenge!
~Graham
Should have seen this a little early hmm…
Ajith
Wow. I actually picked the winner! (seriously, in the comments for the contest) I LOVED Ron’s story. It made me actually pick up my quill and enter. I’m MOST pleased that none of the winners used bizarre abbreviations, etc to squeeze their story in.. Good picks all by the judges (although mine deserved a mention
).
Congrat’s to the winners!
Congratulations to the winners. Ron Gould did a great job and so did the other winners.
And there are some really nice prices handed out. If I knew about this contest earlier I would defenitly entered.
This was absolutely more fun than the finale of American Idol.
Congratulations to all entrants. You have demonstrated your ability with all three of the scholastic “R’s”.
Cheers,
Mitch
I love this contest…just wish I would have finished up an entry and got it in on time.
Writing well is tough enough. Great writing in 140 characters? Now that’s art.
Keep up the great work.
Patrick Byers
The Responsible Marketing Blog
http://responsiblemarketing.com
Congrats to the winners. And now, a moment of silence for the late donors.
Congratulations to the winners. Ron Gould did a great job and so did the other winners.
Congratulations to all entrants. You have demonstrated your ability with all three of the scholastic
Who knew Twitter was having a contest? Congratulations to all of the winners. I guess I’ll pay closer attention when I log into my Twitter accounts.