BALTIMORE — Two young Baltimore men have unlocked the secret to online fame — if not fortune: Say you’ll get a tattoo if people will follow you on Twitter.
Make it a tattoo of Twitter’s iconic fail whale, the symbol that appears when the micro-blogging site sputters out of service. And then live stream the video of you getting tattooed.
That act not only brought more than 1,000 new followers to the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association’s Twitter profile, it caused an Internet sensation twice in February — becoming one of the most popular discussion topics on Twitter.
Tom Rowe (BaltimoreMD on Twitter), the Web guru for the convention and visitors association, threw down the impromptu member challenge on Twitter on Feb. 23, hoping to beat the Chicago and Portland, Ore., tourist bureaus to the 3,000 followers mark.
As an afterthought, he tossed in getting a tattoo as an incentive. Problem was, the 31-year-old didn’t want another tattoo. So his friend Ryan Goff (tweetbomb on Twitter), a social marketing specialist at MGH advertising, gamely offered his leg.
The two holed up at a Baltimore bar, sending messages on Twitter about the tattoo challenge and live-streaming video of it all the while. In a matter of hours, they attracted 1,495 new people to the convention and visitors association on Twitter and hit the site’s coveted most-discussed threshold.
