Comic Con Giveaways via Twitter

This past Friday was a fun day for me, in terms of my Twitter experience. As you all should hopefully know, Comic-Con is coming. It kicks off this Wednesday and runs through the weekend in San Diego, CA. And for those of you that don't know what Comic-Con is, here's the wiki definition for it:

Comic-Con International: San Diego, commonly known as Comic-Con or the San Diego Comic-Con, is an annual multigenre fan convention founded as the Golden State Comic Book Convention and later the San Diego Comic Book Convention in 1970 by Shel Dorf and a group of San Diegans. It is traditionally a four-day event (Thursday through Sunday—though a four-hour preview night on Wednesday is open to guests pre-registered for all four days) held during the summer in San Diego, California, at the San Diego Convention Center. Comic-Con is both the name of the annual event and the common name of the organization.

Comic-Con International also produces two other conventions, WonderCon and the Alternative Press Expo (APE), both held in San Francisco, California. Since 1974, Comic-Con has bestowed its annual Inkpot Award to guests and persons of interest in the industries of popular arts as well as to members of Comic-Con's Board of Directors and convention committee. It is also the home of the Will Eisner Awards.

Originally showcasing comic books, science fiction/fantasy and film/television (as was evident by the three circled figures appearing in Comic-Con's original logo), and related popular arts, the convention has expanded over the years to include a larger range of pop culture elements, such as horror, anime, manga, animation, toys, collectible card games, video games, webcomics, and fantasy novels. The convention is the largest of its kind in the world, filling to capacity the San Diego Convention Center with over 125,000 attendees in 2007. Although Comiket in Tokyo, Japan is four times larger in terms of attendance than Comic-Con, its focus is solely as a gather for the buying, selling, and trading of dōjinshi (self-published comic books and fanzines), somewhat akin to a huge swap meet, and is not a convention in the American sense.

Now that you're all in the know on what Comic-Con is, let's get back to the original story. This past Friday, I saw a tweet on Twitter from the executive producer of Bones, Hart Hanson. It was a tweet about a giveaway that the Sci Fi channel was doing, all though they've now rebranded themselves as ScyFy (another blog, for another day) for 10 bags filled with goodies. Hanson ended his tweet by stating "I'm totally in for swag."

And why wouldn't he be? Swag and trade show giveaways are awesome. And kudos to @syfy for choosing a popular interactive medium to reach their fanbase. After all, the sci-fi fans are the techies of the world. And techies were the first ones who truly embraced twitter.

What's even better is that these giveaways are available to people who aren't going to Comic-Con as well. So technically, I could be one of the winners...if i re-tweeted to enter the contest. So bravo to SyFy for their brilliant use of trade show giveaways via twitter. It's not the first time we've seen it, and it certainly won't be the last.