Hey there Sphinn fans,

If you went to bed early Friday night, the night of September 21, you missed out on what was likely the first Sphinn-To-Sphinn, Head-To-Head, Post-To-Post event of the year.

I know you’re probably bummed out because you either went out partying with friends, went to bed, spent time with family, or did some other non-Sphinn related activity. Not to worry, because I’ve got your back with play-by-play action of what had to have been the biggest Sphinn event of the evening!

The Playing Field: The Submit Section on the Sphinn web site.

The Players: AndyBeard & dsemmler

From the .EU, the Big A, Sphinns one and only Andy Beard. The Niche Marketing master holds a strong position with a current Topics Submitted score of: 24. Not only that, AndyBeard is a Top 10 ranked SphinnMaster who commands an early adopter Joined Date of: 2007-07-19.

From somewhere in the U. S., the proud daddy, the newcomer underdog, Derek Semmler, Sphinn aka dsemmler, with a Joined Date of: 2007-09-04. The newcomer had a Topics Submitted score of: 1, making him truly the unfavored contender.

The Target: a post authored by Marty Weintraub on his aimClear Blog titled: The Enduring Power of Good Manners

Both players were visiting Marty’s blog the evening of September 21. In what was likely the scenario, both Andy and Derek had virtual light bulbs go off in their heads, thinking this was Sphinn Worthy content. The race was on!

They both hit the Sphinn submit page at approximately the same time, even though they were each physically on different continents. Each were unaware of the other’s actions, making the event even more exciting.

AndyBeard, the seasoned veteran went straight for the submit button, and made no deviations from Marty’s original headlines. His description was typed out with lightning speed, and it read… It seems like Marty is a gentleman

No need for spellcheck, Andy went straight for the submit button, SPHUNN! Andy was on the “What’s New” board with a score of one. As fate would have it, I was on that very page in search of something fresh, and there was Andy’s post. The familiar “A” had me instantly, I was certain this would be a topic worthy of a vote. My index finger poised, I moved in to read the post.

But wait, who is that man in the dark sunglasses? It was a post appearing just above Andy’s with a “Jump to” on the same story URL. I just had to check it out. Turns out it was the same post, by the same author, Marty! The newcomer wanted to make a splash with his first submission to Sphinn. In doing so, he got creative and summarized the entire post in a single sentence, which became his title. He followed that with a few descriptive sentences and double checked to make sure “Marty Weintraub” was spelled properly. Imagine making your first post, and dissing a top 50 Sphinner? Had he misspelled it, the result could have been disastrous (the thrill of victory - the agony of defeat).

Semmler carefully checked his title and description in the spellchecker, and when he was fully confident, clicked on the submit button. SPHUNN! Like AndyBeard, Semmler now had a score of one. You were likely asleep, but it was a Sphinntastic moment! In Los Angeles, it was nearly 2 minutes to midnight (rain was pouring down for the first time in months), there were 2 Sphinners, 2 Submissions, and the posts hit the “What’s New” page only 2 Minutes Apart!

Wow, was anyone else aware of this? This was truly a Sphinn Live event. In WWE smackdown fashion, I decided to comment and call the newcomer out. Andy had sphunn the Sphinn button first! The sunglass wearing dsemmler wielded his mouse and was quick to respond in a truly gentleman fashion, claiming he was checking to ensure Marty’s name was spelled correctly, hence the two minute gap.

I thought it might end there, but in from Texas came flyingrose, the goddess of PPC, taking a referee stance, and showing interest on the event continuing. And continue it did! Throughout the night and all across the globe, at least two dozen fellow sphinners came on the scenes and got clicking. Morning came, and I awoke to a Sphinn homepage on my screen. I quickly hit the F5 key on my keyboard. It was Sphinnalicious! Both submissions had gone hot and Marty was getting double barrel Sphinn juice!

In my 31 days of Sphinning, I’d seen nothing like this before. The submitters chose different titles, different descriptions, different categories, and the rest was up to us, the Sphinn community, to make the stories hot. For those of you wanting details, here are some of the stats from the time I grabbed them…

Three Hidden Treasures of Social Media - Thank You, Please and Congratulations
Went Hot: September 22, 2007 - 5:44 am
Posted By: dsemmler 12 hours ago
Topic Type: News Story
Category: Networking

The Enduring Power of Good Manners
Went Hot: September 22, 2007 - 4:57 am
Posted By: AndyBeard 12 hours ago
Topic Type: News Story
Category: Other Social Media

While its winding down, the race is still on, and there is no winner yet. The moral of the story here is that some topics are not only Sphinn worthy, they are double barrel, double bandwidth, Sphinn worthy!