140Char

What better way to celebrate the ending of the year, the end of the decade, and the huge rise in popularity and usage of microblogging than starting a series celebrating the biggest moments in Twitter?

So here’s a particularly poignant moment to start with – the hint of a truce between the two rival factions of Coca Cola and Pepsi, from July, 2009.

Coca Cola makes contact on Twitter

And Pepsi responds on Twitter

The idea came from Amnesia Razorfish, with founder Iain McDonald tweeting both beverage empires. You can read more about how the message picked up momentum with plenty of retweets on the Amnesia Razorfish blog.

So Pepsi has included a Twitter tag printed on 1.4 million cans of the new Pepsi Raw drink here in the UK.

Firstly, it’s great to see something new being done in the UK by a multinational, rather than watching the U.S. from afar. The account is @pepsiraw, there’s also a website (pepsiraw.co.uk), and a Facebook page.

Pepsi Raw by dhsingadia on Flickr (CC Licence)

Now, I have to admit I have my doubts about whether this will be done effectively. For starters, I wrote a post last year on my marketing blog about ‘How Coke and Pepsi are wasting their online strategy‘ – it was kickstarted by Pepsi’s outreach to prominent bloggers and promotion of The Pepsi Cooler friendfeed room.  The fact that contributions were onlyposted byPepsi staff and all comments are held for moderation during U.S. working hours made for a pretty stilted attempt at conversation. And now it just repeats the @pepsico Twitter account (With just 2335 followers).

The early signs for @pepsiraw aren’t much better. One reply from 20 messages since April 23, 2009, with the rest simply broadcasting the next location where free samples are being given out. And so far just 363 people have deemed it worth following.

The lesson here is that is doesn’t matter whether Pepsi gave out 1 can with the Twitter address or 1.4 million. As somone who drinks a ridiculous amount of caffeinated soft drinks, and was intrigued to try Raw, I found the address, looked at the tiny amount of non-replies, and then went and had conversations with other people.

The question is whether it will change if more followers appear or will the Raw Twitter promotion stay underdone?

It sounds pretty radical, but here’s a suggestion that Pepsi should buy Twitter.

In some ways it’s not as crazy as it might sound, particularly now Pepsi are on Friendfeed, and are engaging social media.

I’m going to think about it with a refreshing soft drink