Buy.com doing first ever Twitter scavenger hunt

Ecommerce merchant, Buy.com, is hold what a Twitter contest, which they're calling Tweet 'n Seek. It's kind of an online scavenger hunt. Here's how it works straight from the horse's mouth:

• Become a Buy.com follower on Twitter (www.twitter.com/buy_com) now and wait for the first question. (Which will be soon forthcoming at the time of this writing.)
• Each question will lead participants to a different web page on the internet.
• Once on the correct web page you will be notified and given the next question.
• Questions will be hidden on various web pages.
• Referring to other sites may be necessary in order to obtain question answers.
• Once you have completed all of the questions you must post all of your answers together on Buy.com’s Facebook Wall.

The grand prize winner gets a bevy of prizes including an unlocked iPhone 3G, Slingbox set-top box, $500 movie gift certificate, Toshiba portable hard-drive and more. It's certainly a prize package worth the effort. There are some runner up prizes as well which are not to be sneezed, five in all. 

What intrigues me most about the contest is not winning the prize package. The likelihood is that I won't participate, or for very long if I do. Time does not permit. I'm jazzed about the creative use of Twitter to build buzz and brand awareness and am anxious to see how this turns out and in what ways it benefits the company. I'd further like to know what their marketing objectives are with the campaign. (Anyone from Buy.com care to respond, please do.)

I'd be very interested in your experience as well, if you choose to participate. Please leave a comment to let me know. 

Comments

[dirkmshaw]

Hey Paul,

I too find this an interesting activity and am curious how it goes.

Dirk

[Adam Roades]

I just participated in the TweetnSeek content...along with thousands of others. I did it for fun and for the off chance that I might qualify for a runner-up prize. But due to time constraints, I wasn't even close to being one of the first to complete the contest. In fact, if the rough timestamp is any indication, the first guy to finish did so within minutes of the contest start.

Will I do it again? Maybe, if I have the time. I do like the cleverness of the game; it reminds me of a much simpler version of the Lost alternate reality game (was that one or two years ago); though that was just for bragging rights, not cool toys!