On a day that UKIP launch their poster campaign for #EP2014, EU Twitter fighters launched their campaign to be crowned EU #TFC14 champion. (see joke UKIP posters throughout the post). It was an astonishing to see the amount of tweets and the number of non-competitors (and L16 competitors) getting involved already. Keep it up! The European public sphere is (probably not) in reach!
Quick note before the results. One judge – Sven – is unfortunately ill – and his vote has been divided between the participants. If you were knocked out then it’d be great if you could spend a few minutes today/tomorrow judging please – as there are very few of us! Please tweet or email at eutwitterfightclub[at]gmail.com
***(1) @hughbs 72% 0 votes
(2) @pswidlicki 28% 0 votes
With no votes received from either judge, the public gets 100% say in this fight. The grumpy @hughbs goes into the L16!
***(1) @Vpertusot 42% 1.5 votes
(2) @chchristiaens 58% 0.5votes
Despite losing the public vote, @Vpertusot edges out his rival (with bonus points for discussing #TFC14 at a real-world event)
(2) @quarsan 13% 0.5 votes
***(1) @Christina_D_S 88% 1.5votes
@quarsan didn’t want to be here and by the end of the day the voters didn’t want him to be here either. @Christina_D_S storms home with a strong win and may prove to be the people’s champion!
Judge: @ganemmahaa
Between @Christian_D_S and @quarsan it’s more difficult but I’ll have to go with Christina she was fun (as was he) but he didn’t deliver much pictures and certainly not those of Ashton!
***(1) @ktowens 82% 0 votes
(2) @tineurope 18% 1 votes
A judge’s abstention means the popular vote wins the day. @ktowens is through to the next round!
Judge:@danabrussels
I will abstain on this one and leave it exclusively up to @ShearmanM and the public! @tineurope is a bright young researcher I know personally; he often gets RTed by the great @Berlaymonster and even finds time to contribute to my @sloganeuizer, observing real-election-campaign-life and sharing it on Twitter. @ktowens touched a sensitive chord sharing a photo of her lovely baby and posting about direct experiences with Schengen! So: impossible to choose 🙂
Judge:@shearmanm
@tineurope was consistent throughout the day – providing interesting and useful tweets on #EP2014. He also helped fellow competitor @jonworth out with some funny #EP2014 posters – in particular this gem below convinced me early on that he would probably win the day:
That doesn’t mean @ktowens didn’t do a great job! She was clearly interested in #TFC14 from the start and the early sharing of baby photos proved to me that she was willing to go personal to win the hearts and minds of Europe. Doubly so when she shared a picture of her flight (love planes!) Her delayed flight meant she was out of action for a chunk of the day though and it showed. Playing to her strengths, her day may have been saved if she had won a big endorsement from either @EPP @EPPGroup (her employers i believe) after she went calling for support. But these attempts appeared to fail and I was left with the view that she’d make a better judge than a true twitter fighter in the next round. (please email me!)
Final thought – loved this tweet by Valentin. Showed humility, humour and love of #TFC14 in equal measure:
#tfc14 is great! I have had mentions/replies/RTs by @jonworth@Berlaymonster and @captain_europe 🙂 Are they my personal #troika?
I wouldn’t count on it Valentin. Because you could be facing them very soon…. I vote @tineurope.
***(1) @huettemann 56% 2 votes
(2) @nickcrosby 44% votes
Solid victory for @huettemann in a largely dull fight.
Judge:@danabrussels
My vote goes to @huettemann. Two of the 3 tweeps I randomly selected to help me with the judging had a veery hard time choosing between these two! Guys, you have really engaged followers that know you and like you a lot! Nick fiercely criticized UKIP’s manifesto, Bernd made plenty of useful comments on the EP elections and the Commission – proving a sense of humour, while speaking about EU treaties; I see big potential there! Good luck with @MissMillicent!
Judge:@shearmanm
Seriously guys. Were you even twitter fighting? I don’t think I saw you for most of the day and didn’t get much engagement from either of you (maybe a few RT’s). Hows a judge meant to choose without some pandering / quality engagement?
This fight seemed less like a battle and more a ‘business as usual’ day at the twitter office. @nickcrosby made some quality points in response to UKIP’s poster campaign (certainly the story of the day) while @huettemann focused on the lack of #EP2014 campaigning.
So…. in a tightly fought contest, for all the wrong reasons, I vote @huettemann. I don’t want to set a precedent by pointing to @huettemann ‘s multilingualism – but throwing some German my way will always go down well and in this he had the clincher.
(-) @usherwood 50% 1 vote
(-) @tom_wein 50% 1 vote
This is unheard of Twitter Fight Club history. After the public and judges’ votes are considered both fighters are finely balanced on 50/50 vote. (note to self, use an odd number of judges in the future). This result truly reflects the best fight of the day (getting the most public votes overall too) and the only way to settle this is to progress both fighters – I hope you’re rested -the L16 will be a three way melee with @euonmyblog!
Judge:@danabrussels
My vote goes to @usherwood.
A difficult battle! This duel is actually the top 2 of most talkative #tfc14 tweeps. So imagine! Risking Twitter jail, they shared deep EU insights and incessantly
RTed great content. @tom_wein RTed quite a number of my tweets, but @usherwood tweeted late (sometimes even in German), probably skipping dinner, and showing he was eager to meet @euonmyblog in L16. So good luck to him, he’ll need it against Antonia!
Judge:@shearmanm
I knew that EU Twitter Fight Club was cruel when this battle emerged from the rankings… Noone did more than these two twitter fighters to make me believe EU #TFC14 was worth putting time into creating all those weeks ago. Its a cruel twist of fate that one of them should be sent home in the first round. I promise not to abstain though. They, out of the whole field, understood TFC before they entered and wouldn’t want it to end that way…..
This was a classic mismatch. Tom tweeted often and Simon tweeted well. Tom used every TFC trick in the book (bribery, flattery, humour, and a few snarky comments) while Simon took the moral high ground. Pre-game Simon had been really fun, Tom had been absent. But boy, did Tom turn up today.
Simon made an early play with a pretty interesting (and under-noticed) blog post on #TFC14 – playing to his strength of being one of the few working academics in the competition. Both took on the UKIP story, but in sharp contrast to Simon, Tom took a scatter gun approach across all fields, interests and continents (I believe you’re US based, no?) – calling in support from a number of US sources.
Tom also delivered the most notable tweeting marathon of the day. Unfortunately it was on Harry Potter and not the EU. This was classic US TFC and felt out of sync with the tone of the day and what I expected from tweeters on this side of the atlantic.
I created a storify-book of the tweets here entitled “@Tom_wein and the misguided Potter monologue” if you really want to read it. I’ll be honest and tell you that I didn’t – it was too long and was clearly filling up the time before Simon returned to pick a fight with.
But that was the point. If there was anything to split these two excellent competitiors, it was that Mr Usherwood kept disappearing. Apparently lunch and writing a chapter in a book (yes people, paper) means more to him than a very cheap trophy and a lot of (non paper-based) praise. What can I say? A few scheduled tweets would’ve covered that, but I guess you made your life choices….
Despite lots of nice humility, Simon was funny and delivered some classic snark photoshop edits too:
Here was Tom’s offering:
Simon still could have walked away with my vote had Tom not saved himself in the afternoon by tweeting some interesting references to Norman Davies, Brussels and tweeting late into the night to prove that he wanted it more. And that was it – Simon, I wanted your high-quality, reasonable-intensity approach to win. I really did, but at the end of the day, for all his failings, @tom_wein wanted it more and I want that person to go through. Suggestion for next round though Tom, make it useful, relevant and keep the humour if you want to progress. Quantity isn’t everything.
(2) @mikakosinska 43% 1 vote
****(1) @craigwinneker 57% 1 vote
@craigwinneker takes it with the popular vote!
Judge:@danabrussels
My vote goes to @mikakosinska
The Monika campaign is on the roll! The early bird gets the worm: Monika was the first to tweet this morning (ok, technically after @huettemann, who tweeted yesterday evening @ 12:06 am). She started her serious tour à la #JunckerBus (endorsed by one of the most influential #TFC14 tweeps, Jon Worth). With her to-the-point tweets about EU policies of various member states and a big potential to touch hearts (see photo of her lovely baby boy), Monika will be a strong opponent to @Berlaymonster in L16.
One point for Craig’s humour, but he obviously had other things to do and threw the towel quite early in the battle.
Judge:@shearmanm
@craigwinneker – you are a clever man. Demonstrating classic Twitter Fight Club tactics, you delivered a @berlaymonster-esque twitter hashtag (#NewEUJargon) early in the day. This not only set the bar high for @mikakosinska to meet but also made it harder for the Monster to deliver the same tactic when one of you face him in the next round. Put simply, you get Twitter Fight Club and I respect that.
Of these, my favourite had to be:
Craig Winneker @CraigWinneker 12h
“Cleverage”: (n) rhetorical advantage gained by using “leverage” as a verb #NewEUJargon#TFC14
@mikakosinska fought back well with baby photos (so cute!) and received major kudos for roping in @jonworth to tweet a picture in front of a campaign bus (is this verified from yesterday???):
At times though it seemed like she was fighting the wrong opponent (maybe @dicknieuw.enhuis is all of our opponents?) She made a strong argument in favour of fighting for a better union and had some nice tweets towards the end:
Monika Kosinska @mikakosinska 12h
@dicknieuwenhuis Many don’t realise the fight never finishes. Peace&prosperity take work& evolution @MigeruBlogger@erikwesselius@LostinEU
Correct. And as organiser and judge I have the burden of having to consider whats best for the competition as a whole. Who can really take the fight to the end? At present that means who has the best chance of defeating the BerlayMonster in your next round. For this reason and this reason alone, I vote @craigwinneker.
And that’s all folks – don’t forget to vote in the L16!
Twitter Fight Club-EU 
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