One question I get asked quite often lately is, “What exactly is Twitter? Isn’t it basically just like Facebook?” Frankly I’m still working on the best way to answer this one. Examples typically help in the explanation process. In many ways Twitter is like Facebook from the standpoint of updating your current “status” or activity, but yesterday I took part in one of the cooler uses of Twitter that I have witnessed to-date.

About a month ago, I began following professional skateboarding legend, Tony Hawk, on Twitter (@tonyhawk). Now some may think that following a famous person that I don’t personally know may be a little stalker-ish, but here’s the thing – Tony makes updates pretty regularly on Twitter, often including links to photos or videos, so it’s not like he’s unwilling to share information. This Easter, Tony Hawk gave a little something back to the 370+ thousand of tweeple currently following him on Twitter, his own version of an Easter Egg Hunt. He distributed what seemed like maybe 50 signed skateboard decks to various locations across the U.S., Australia, and Ireland (I may have missed a location), then released clues to the locations of the decks via his Twitter feed.

Well, to this day, skateboarding remains one of my favorite sports having spent many years wrecking my body as an early teen in pursuit of the elusive dream of becoming a pro skateboarder. That being said, I was all over this. At about 10am local time, the tweet came through:

“Chi-1 – Erie Park sculpture. Corner of Erie and Kingsbury in River North area (Chicago)”

That’s all I needed to see. About 10 minutes, and several stoplights later, I was on the scene. JACKPOT!

The game continued into the evening, all across the U.S. people were finding them in all types of places: photo booths, bushes, sculptures and in turn, Tony Hawk made fans of all of us all over again. Who knows what Tony was doing all day, where he was going, who he was hanging out with, but nevertheless, he was able to stay in touch with his fans, one tweet at a time.

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