As a boy growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, I had dreams. Dreams of scoring the winning goal in the Stanley Cup finals, dreams of one day walking on the moon, dreams of starring alongside Goldie Hawn in a badly produced romantic comedy, and dreams of one day winning the @deanshaw Twitter Madness Tourney. But alas those dreams were derailed by poor skating skills, a moth-balled space program, a shortcoming in Hollywood good-looks, and ineligibility to participate in my own Twitter Tourney. Just as the stars aligned against me, they shot beacons of hope to 64 competitors in this year’s tournament. One by one those stars dimmed until there were just two remaining challengers for this year’s crown.

The last Tweeters standing are @jowyang and @jimsterne. They both showed the mettle, endurance, and acumen over each of their opponents to meet here in the Twitter Madness Final. As legends in their respective fields this promised to be a rock ‘em sock ‘em final. Let’s go to the action shall we?

Tale of the Tape

Color Commentary: @jowyang
Jeremiah showed his usual consistency during the final, bringing the noise AND the funk. He appeared to say “This is who I am, take me or leave me” This was a surprisingly courageous strategy given that this was likely the most important two days of tweeting in his life. But he showed amazing poise as he offered up some great tweets including:

Which revealed some amazingly funny (and real) corporate URLs like:

* Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at http://www.expertsexchange.com

* Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at http://www.penisland.net

* Then of course, there’s the Italian Power Generator company… http://www.powergenitalia.com

The snarky but insightful:

And alerting us to a new search engine that no one will ever use:

He was really focused and effective until…

In a jaw-dropping twitter meltdown, Jeremiah became distracted by an iPhone glitch that derailed the intense focus that had become his hallmark. By the time the issue was resolved, the buzzer had sounded on his Twitter Madness Championship. But did he do enough to win?

Color Commentary: @jimsterne
Unlike Jeremiah, Jim took an opposite tact for the final, and in chameleon-like fashion departed from his normal web/social media measurement focus to go “all in” on the Twitter Madness Tourney. At much risk to his legion of Twitter followers, who undoubtedly thought Jim had fallen off the Tweet wagon, Jim mixed in a heavy dose of content targeting the championship that he knew was needed to win the competition and gain true social media credibility.

So in addition to his normal tweet programming, Jim surgically addressed my blog post “The Complete List of 25 Tweet Types” posting examples of each type of tweet douchebaggery with amazing accuracy.

So it would seem obvious that this would cement a victory for the metrics man right? Well, actually not really. How’s that for suspense?

Final Analysis:
Ok, ya see folks, the thing with this Twitter stuff is that it’s all really just an endless stream of blather with a shelf life of about 10 sec. before it evaporates into the digital ether. You can talk about “influence” and “engagement”, and God forbid, “Klout” all you want, but in the end all that stuff is just bullshit. “Real” engagement doesn’t happen here in the digital world – it happens at your work, on your campus, on the field, in the grocery store, and at home. That’s were real connections are made. So put down your laptop, your phone, your Twitter, your Facebook, and go talk to someone, you know, someone non-digital, and go have a real conversation.

And without further ado (drum roll please…or rim shot….your choice) the winner of the 2012 @deanshaw Twitter Madness Tournament is:

@jimsterne

Listen, I think all of the people I follow on Twitter are great, especially those who made it in this year’s tourney. You keep me informed, make me laugh, often ruin my productivity, and make life a little more interesting. For that, I thank you all!

But what separated Jim this year was the fact that the tournament started with me being an absolute unknown in his world. As the tournament progressed and Jim moved along in it, we interacted (digitally) about the tournament. At some point we inspired each other to create blog posts. Me in a post called ‘Social Media; Influence, Engagement and the Elusive ROI’ (For what it’s worth Jim told me I was wrong and threw a pox on my house) and Jim in a post entitled ‘Social Intercourse: How to Score Online’

Eventually, however, the “digital” became “human” and ended on the patio of a Starbucks in North Carolina, where Jim and I traded wild and woolly stories from the world of analytics. The vapor of Twitter had turned into the caramel macchiato of real conversation. And that, my friend, is “engagement”.

Congratulations Jim!

So there you have it. The 2102 @deanshaw Twitter Madness Tourney.

Congratulation to the runner-up @jowyang who will assume the crown should @jimsterne be unable to fulfill the requirements of champion. Odds are 50/50 on that.

Finally, congratulations to all tourney participants, who all bring value to my twitterstream every day.

See you all again in 2013.

@deanshaw

Now back to my regularly scheduled and woefully backlogged blog posts

To check out the final brackets go to @deanshaw Twitter Madness 2012 Brackets
For more info on the tourney check out my 2012 Twitter Madness Tourney Page