And the Winner is…Atomicdust!

So Danielle, our resident social media guru, is up in NYC. Lucky for us, she will be back next week. For those of you who don’t know, Danielle had been handpicked by MTV to compete in their quest to find their first ever TJ (Twitter Jockey). After graciously accepting their invitation, she competed for two weeks in a series of Twitter-based challenges for a chance at a one-year, $100K contract to join them in New York. Like most of the other candidates, she played to win. But unlike many of the others, she did it while holding down her full-time gig, changing the world one member-based service provider at a time. Long story short, the field of contestants was trimmed to five, and Danielle’s quest to become MTV’s first TJ very quietly came to an end.

Meanwhile, freelance copywriter and friend of Atomicdust, Amanda Zahnweh was in the throes of a little competition herself. She cracked the short list of finalists in another Twitter-based challenge, this one thrown down by Saatchi + Saatchi LA, billed as "The World's Shortest-Form Writing Contest." Amanda’s entry was one of a handful that were selected by the mega-agency’s Creative Director to be voted on by the public for a chance at a position worth $70K. Finishing third unofficially, she will not be running off to Los Angeles and that’s quite alright with us...officially.

Bittersweet as it may be, the winner in all of this is Atomicdust. We get to hang on to them both (for slightly less than $170K/yr). It added up to a pretty cool experience, not just for the girls, but for all of us. It sort of validated this notion that we’ve got great people capable of doing great things. That, and it gave us something to check out online other than stock photography and Google Analytics.