Skyscanner 24 hour Twitter Challenge

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Skyscanner sets itself 24 hour challenge to develop, launch and get 1 million tweets for new Twitter flight finder service @FlyScan

In just 24 hours (starting at 12.00 today GMT) leading travel search site Skyscanner will develop and launch the new@ FlyScan Twitter search tool.

Twitter users will be able to tweet their flight request to @FlyScan and receive an immediate tweet back with the best flight price available. The second part of the eye-watering challenge the company has set itself is to send 1 million @FlyScan tweets out by midday tomorrow (24th March 2011).

Dreamed up by some of the Skyscanner team over dinner last night, the FlyScan project was given the go ahead just this morning.

“We love this idea,” said Skyscanner’s Development Director Bonamy Grimes. “We could have taken our time with this and built it into our development schedule but we thought what the hell, let’s develop it, launch it and get people using it in one day.

“It’s a massive development challenge. Adding the 1 million tweets target just makes it more fun! Will we hit the target? Maybe, maybe not, but 1 million is our new favourite number since we reached a million downloads of the new iPhone app yesterday.”

Follow the team’s progress on the 24 hour challenge on Twitter @FlyScan using #flyscan and on the project blog at http://flyscan.org.

“We’re already on a roll,” said Bonamy Grimes. “The atmosphere is buzzing and we’re going to make this happen. We’ll be blogging our progress as we go, so check in and see how we’re doing against the deadline. The clock’s ticking!”

To raise the stakes even higher and as an added incentive to the team, Skyscanner has pledged to donate £25,000 to Comic Relief when the 1 million tweet target is reached.

About Skyscanner
Skyscanner is Europe’s leading travel search site providing instant online comparisons on flight prices for over 670,000 routes on over 600 airlines, as well car hire and holidays. Skyscanner was founded in 2001 by three IT professionals, Gareth Williams, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes. Traffic to the site now comes from 244 countries and territories worldwide. With more than 10 million users per month, Skyscanner generates downstream revenues of over one billion dollars every year.

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PR Contacts
Cass Helstrip/ Mary Porter/Sam Poullain
cass@skyscanner.net/maryp@skyscanner.net/samp@skyscanner.net
07968 255 464 / 0131 252 5353