I stole this image from @1918

Unlike last year’s tournament where a Cinderella in the form of @1918 stormed the Final Four, this year’s event featured some true heavyweights of the Twitter-sphere. The question on everyone’s mind is who will join @spikejones and @jimsterne in the hallowed hall of the Twitter Madness infamy. Each of the Final Four contestants would be worthy champions but alas just won will receive the honor of saying “Twitter Madness Tourney? I have no clue what you’re talking about.” But before we get to the championship we must first determine the combatants. Let’s go to the Final Four Summary…

@unmarketing v. @jowyang:

The early favorite in this match had to be @jowyang given his experience in the Twitter Madness event. In fact it was just last year that Jeremiah battle tweet-to-tweet with eventual champion Jim Sterne in an epic match-up so surely his mettle is well tested in this arena.

During his match-up @jowyang went with the “Travelogue Strategy” last seen in the 1972 Twitter Madness Tourney and we followed Jeremiahs travel to New York.  Some of the things we learned were:

• He had a bunch of meetings
• He either meditates or medicates depending on whether you believe him or his auto-correct
• The World Trade Center looks magnificent – so eff you terrorists!
• He had some more meetings
• The AT&T building is designed to withstand a nuclear attack – and probably angry customers I assume
• People in Colorado speak the most normal…or is it Ohio…whatever.
• More meetings
• Sushi chefs spend waaaaaaay too much time learning their craft
• It takes 5,100 gallons of fuel to fly from NYC to SF just slightly more than what a Hummer uses going to the other side of town.

In all a rather pedestrian performance by the Altimeter Man. Frankly I woulda cut my trip short so that I could focus on the Tourney but whatevs

So what about @unmarketing ? Could he topple last year’s Tourney Runner up?  What did we learn from Scott during the match-up?

• He’s a lawbreaker.  A nice lawbreaker but a lawbreaker nonetheless (FWIW, only would a Canadian compliment the cop that pulled him over)

• He offered his insight on what happens when you unsubscribe from an email list

• He shared a follower’s insight on QR Code strategy

• He provided an analysis of Microsoft’s Retail presence.

• He finished off with a video of 5 Year-Old Jonah Rocking out on a System of a Down drum cover

Yes Jonah, you rock! But you know who else rocks? @unmarketing, that’s who.

Winner: @unmarketing

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@JustinKownacki v. @AndyBeal:

A battle of two Twitter Madness Tourney veterans.  One “Armchair sociologist & perpetual contrarian”, the other CEO of @Trackur, founder of @MarketingPilgrm. Loves the ukulele, taekwo….what? Plays the ukulele?  Oh let’s check that out.  I suggest turning the speakers to 11 while reading the remainder of this post

So @JustinKownacki of the Erie, Pennsylvania Kownackis is always a though provoking observer of his surroundings.  He almost didn’t even qualify for the tournament because I suspect his intellect is too high, but then I remembered he was from Erie, PA, the same town as my good pal @ToddAllen9 and he’s pretty much an idiot so I figured how smart could this Justin guy really be.  But back to the task at hand, Justin started as he normally does poking his followers with tweet like this:

And ya know he’s got a point…in fact I think I taking tomorrow off.

He also wisely observed:

I’ll throw in people with clean offices, whassup wit dat?

But then he went all intellectual on us again:

I mean I love bedeviled eggs as much as the next guy but what does that have to do with electronics? But he eventually brought himself back with a well-timed burrito reference:

But then went right back to the intellectual stuff quoting, of course Nabokov, who is, of course, the back-up goaltender for the New York Islanders

Wait….what???

So, in typical @JustinKownacki style he gave you  mixed bag ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, from the highbrow to the low brow…ok….I don’t even know what that means.

Now what of @AndyBeal, he of the indiscernible accent, what was he up to during this critical match-up…

Once again he was up to his old tricks, vacillating between over the top compliments to me, the Owner and Commissioner of the @deanshaw Twitter Madness Tourney and downright jabs to my character.  His bait and switch strategy has worked in the past, but would that continue?

He started by concurring with @FYeahAnalytics on the integrity of the Tourney itself..

Well, I never….

Then he mixed in some stuff about Mobile Ads and LinkedIn…

Then figuring he’d done enough for one day went to go see the Carolina Hurricanes get beat again with 108 of his closest friends.

The funny thing is that I really believe only 108 people showed up for the game cuz those Hurricanes are

Just.

Awful.

Then he jumped back to his compliments:

And then either insulted me or complimented me, I don’t have a clue <mental note: ask @JustinKownacki, he’ll know):

And then he went back to some stuff like ‘reputation management’ and Digg.

And then inexplicitly, without reason, @AndyBeal dropped the biggest bombshell in the 86 year history of the Twitter Madness Tourney:

Surely #RHOC doesn’t mean what I think it means, does it?

“Like, oh my Gawd, I gotta go, I just found out @AndyBeal watches our show”

And with that, the Tournament was halted while Twitter Madness officials checked to see if @AndyBeal’s Twitter account had been hacked by a 49 year divorcee from Nebraska. When it was discovered that @AndyBeal had in fact authored that Tweet, the judges made the pronouncement that this tournament could not go on without @AndyBeal for fear that it would miss more stunning revelations. And so with that we had a winner.

Winner: @AndyBeal

To Justin and Jeremiah we bid a fond farewell. To Andy and Scott….LET”S GET IT ON!

To check out the brackets go to @deanshaw Twitter Madness 2013 Brackets

For more info on the tourney check out my 2013 Twitter Madness Tourney Page