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Virgin America Offers Free Flights to People With Twitter 'Influence'

by Amar Toor on June 22, 2010 at 09:50 AM

virgin america is twitter-friendly
If you happen to be looking for a cheap flight on Virgin America this summer, you might want to spend a bit more time on Twitter. The airline, in collaboration with Twitter analytics service Klout, is now offering a free flight to anyone who has serious influence on the micro-blogging site. Klout determines a user's influence by analyzing several variables -- including an individual's followers, tweets and retweets -- in order to calculate a Klout score from 0 to 100. According to Mashable, the offer includes a free, Wi-Fi-equipped round-trip flight between Toronto and either San Francisco or Los Angeles, and is valid any time between June 23rd and August 23rd. Selected influencers will also be invited to Virgin America's Toronto Launch Event on June 29th, even if they decline the free flight.

After Virgin extends the offer, however, it won't require users to tweet about the company or their experience. "We do not want to 'buy' your tweets. You are receiving the product because you are influential and have authority on topics related to the product," Klout explained in a recent blog post. "This is a more targeted form of receiving a sample while shopping at the grocery store. You are welcome to tell the world you love the product, you hate the product or say nothing at all."

Klout worked with Starbucks on a similar Twitter-based promotion in March, and Virgin America's certainly won't be the last. The campaign may be behaviorally targeted to a certain extent, but it at least gives consumers the choice of whether or not to participate. Everyone has their own threshold of dignity, and no one wants to feel like a corporate pawn; still, we'd tweet pretty much anything to get a free ride on Virgin -- even if it that ride goes to Canada. [From: Mashable]

Tags: ads, advertising, airlines, airplane, flight, klout, LosAngeles, marketing, RichardBranson, SanFrancisco, socialnetworking, top, toronto, travel, twitter, virgin, VirginAmerica, web

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