If you’re reading this post, chances are that you’re either a filmmaker or a Russian spammer who is going to try and leave a comment about where people can get a Microsoft Zune for cheap.  Either way, you probably have a twitter account that you use for online networking.  It took me a long time to get into Twitter but I now hate it a lot less than I used to.  Turns out twitter can actually be a helpful tool if you’re into video contests.  For example, I’ve learned that if you want to get a response from a contest sponsor, sometimes you should try sending them an @ message on twitter.  Most companies monitor their accounts closely and apparently they actively try to make it look like they’re friendly, responsive and easy to deal with.  Last summer I spent months and months trying to get one company to pay me a big contest prize they owed me.  I sent tons of e-mails and my contact just kept giving me the run around.  But then I sent a tweet asking why I hadn’t been paid my prize yet and BAM….the response was immediate.  My contact was unhappy that I made my “problem” public but it finally forced them to take care of the issue.

But of course, you can use Twitter for nice things too.  I follow a bunch of video contest companies on twitter and you know what?  You should too.  They tweet out a lot of good info.  Case in point: I’m shooting an entry for Mofilm’s Walmart competition this weekend and just yesterday Mofilm tweeted that new video assets had been added to the project.  I’ll use one of those clips for sure in my commercial and I wouldn’t have even know they were available if it wasn’t for twitter.

So for the first time ever, I thought I’d take part in the weekly twitter tradition known as #FollowFriday.  It’s where users tweet out suggestions of who to follow.  So here are my #FollowFriday suggestions:

ONLINEVIDEOCONTESTS.COM: 

FILMTHENEXT.COM: 

MOFILM: 

POPTENT: 

TONGAL: 

ZOOPPA: 

And of course, if you don’t already follow VCN on Twitter, you should add us too.  And because I’m feeling saucy today I’ll even follow back any new followers VCN gets this weekend.  Yarg…sentences like that are one of the reasons twitter still annoys me a little.

VCN: