A social media vision quest (in tweets): genius tweets from Waterstones

by @gordonmacmillan, posted on 19 July, 2012 at 9:00 am, filed under Social Media and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

There are some quirky Twitter feeds out there brightening up our Twitter streams that as well as being informative are also just a little bit off beat. More indie than corporate, more stand-up than variety show.

Last year, for instance, there was a lot of talk about the official Betfair Poker Twitter feed that was offering a surreal picture of life in the Betfair Poker office with some curious philosophies thrown in.

In a similarly entertaining vein is bookseller Waterstones and the feed from its Oxford Circus store, which offers an amusing geek filled stream of tweets with a character all of there own that come in stark contrast to the bookstore’s official Twitter feed. 

While @Waterstones official Twitter feed with 43,967 is informative and useful its @WstonesOxfordSt with 18,778 entertains as well as telling you what is going on in the store as much as anything else.

It can be a tricky thing getting the tone and the balance right, but after more than a year this is one account that definitely has achieved that.

It shows a willingness by Waterstones to let those involved in social media in its stores have some freedom to create and the results with almost 20,000 speak for themselves.

The tweets are very much in the vein of some of these recent examples:

 

The @WstonesOxfordSt feed has also engages really in some equally amusing short Twitter stories. That is to say a series of amusing tweets stitched together around a theme which it curated on Storify. There is the tale of The Watersones 11 and the tale of Higgs Boson and Professor Brian Cox’s desire to conquer all worlds and then there is this one about a social media vision quest, which is well worth sharing: