TwitRand allows the randomization of followers and retweeters for contest purposes. The free service offers two options:
- Selecting be Follower List: For example, if a company is giving away a new laptop to a random user who follows them, they input their own twitter username (@company) and then TwitRand randomly selects a user from their follower list to win the prize.
- Entering a URL, phrase, or hashtag will randomly select a twitter user who has used this phrase in one of their tweets. This would work if the company was giving away the laptop to a random twitter user who included their URL or custom hashtag in their tweet. An example of this would be, “ReTweet this message to win a free laptop from @company! http://www.companywebsite.com #laptopgiveaway2010″
In this example, the use of http://www.companywebsite.com or #laptopgiveaway2010 would both be good choices to input in the field on TwitRand.
Many companies and individuals who do online contests also use Random.org. This generates a random number in a certain number range. To use this, the organization would have to assign each entry a number.
