As we approach the end of the year we thought we could do one of our own Site of Note's. You might have heard us mention the Hogwarts Wizarding Class recently (especially seeing as it got us a prestigious Bookmarks award for Social Media). It's one of our favourites to come out of Quirk this year.
Launched amidst the mania of the 6th installment in the Potter film franchise, the Hogwarts Wizarding Class lets you take some of the fun magic from the films and apply it directly to your friends on Twitter.
Upon entering the site you’ll notice some very familiar imagery. The background is that of Snape’s Potions class, including a funky steaming cauldron, while all instructions and fields appear on pieces of parchment. However, my favourite piece is the cursor which takes the shape of a quill (complete with dripping ink over clickable items).
Once you have logged into your Twitter account through the above-mentioned parchments, you are presented with floating icons for two spells and two potions. Clicking on any of these gives a user the option to preview the effects that the selected spell or potion will have on a Twitter page.
When casting your desired effect you can then either type in your friends’ Twitter names or select them from a list. Following this you are then given a choice of messages to use.
It’s once you’ve cast your spell that the real magic starts though. Your friend receives a TinyURL along with the message that you chose (which encourages them to visit the link). Clicking on the link will then show them their own Twitter profile being affected by the relevant spell.
Obviously it’s not their actual page that gets affected, but rather a scrape of their profile - a snapshot - which then has the effects of the spell cast on it by a Flash overlay. However, the surprise of seeing your page taken over by the Potter magic (thanks to the hidden link in the TinyURL) coupled with the personal message really manages to carry over the franchise’s fun elements into the Twitterverse.
At a time when the world was frothing at the mouth for the latest release, this proved to be an extremely effective viral tactic that added to the magic of the film. It’s great to see that it is still picking up a lot of traction on Twitter and is still being written about to this day. With the spells being cast 16 times per minute at one stage, it's safe to say that the site was a success.
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