Aug. 13--When it comes to winning Twitter contests, Hunter Scott proved to be a real genius.
Intrigued by all of the "retweet to win" posts he saw cluttering the social media site, the 25-year-old engineer decided to create a computer program to automatically enter as many contests as it could find.
It found a lot and entered about 165,000 Twitter contests over nine months. And it was a winning idea as well, netting Scott more than 1,000 prizes ranging from trinkets to trips.
"It was all just a giant experiment to see what would happen," Scott said. "It turns out it works pretty well."
Scott launched the program last year while working as an electrical engineer at Motorola Solutions in Schaumburg. The prizes started arriving at his northwest suburban townhome in the spring, piling up steadily on his doorstep until December, when the so-called Twitter bot was mysteriously shut down, presumably for working a bit too well.
"It probably just got reported by another user," Scott said.
The most valuable prize he won was a trip to Fashion Week in New York, valued at $4,000. Travel expenses were not included, so Scott never claimed his trip. His favorite prize was a cowboy hat signed by the stars of a Mexican telenovela.
"I had no clue that would show up," Scott said. "It was a totally random thing, and I was pretty amused by that."
The Twitter scheme is similar to a plot point in the 1985 movie "Real Genius," where a reclusive computer whiz creates a program to enter contests and drives away in a newly won RV loaded with valuable prizes. Scott said the movie was not the inspiration for his quest, which was really driven by curiosity.
Most of the prizes are no longer in Scott's possession.
"Some of them I've still got," he said. "I donated some stuff, like shirts. The things I couldn't give away, I just threw out."
A Florida native with a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from Georgia Tech, Scott has since moved to California, where he co-founded Ohm, a Silicon Valley startup trying to build a better replacement car battery. He recently posted the results of his Twitter contest experiment online, creating a buzz in the computer coding world and beyond.
On Sunday, Scott did a national radio interview with Rachel Martin for NPR's "Weekend Edition," recounting how his automated retweets led to the prizes. He has refused to share his precise methodology, however, for fear of unleashing a wave of contest hogs or worse yet, non-coders seeking him out for programming advice.
"I have not released the code, although if you're a programmer, it's not very hard to implement," Scott said. "I'm sure some people will try it."
rchannick@tribpub.com
