Who is AdLand Suit?

So, who is the man without the head?

Have you heard me talk about AdLand Suit before? I wrote a post about ALS in August after he sent me a postcard from Edinburgh (and a number of other people got them also).

I like the idea of Mr AdLand Suit, I like the fact he is anonymous and he writes a pretty amazing blog. In fact, if I were still a suit I do believe it would my bible, apart from the X-Factor live tweeting. Would live my life by that necessarily, but otherwise he has incredibly sound advice.

So, I gotta admit, part of the intrigue is the fact that he is faceless. We (those of us who live and breathe twitter particularly) spend a lot of our time talking to faceless people online everyday. Sometimes there are 'avatars' but can you ever be sure that the person looks like that in real life? I take all avatars with a grain of salt, lets be fair. ALS on the other hand has never put a face to the name, it is literally a conversation with a faceless person.

Back to the point, he has decided it is time to take off the mask. Dun dun duuunnnnnn...

Not only is he going to answer the question many of us have asked for quite some time, he is using his anonymity, and the curious/generous nature of his followers to do good.

He is taking donations for Marie Curie Cancer Care and once donations reach £1000 he is going to reveal who he is. He is already over £3000, after less than a week. Needless to say, those who follow ALS are chomping at the bit to find out who this man really is. You can read all about it here.

Apparently all will be revealed this week, after he has checked with the place of his employ. I'm looking forward to it, and not at the same time. I kinda liked the mystery. I guess too, I wonder, if being anonymous since March in his postings, is this going to change the blog? If people know who he is, will he sensor himself? That would be a shame. Also, I'm not in London, so I can't hit him up for a beer. I wonder if I donated the most he would fly me over and take me out for lunch... Probably not.

While I have not donated (come on, donating £ on an NZ salary? With the current exchange rate?) I do have a request for ALS, don't go changing. You have such a strong following for a reason.

And the countdown to unmasking commences...

Twitter can be Personal

I find that when I mention that I use Twitter a lot of people roll their eyes. It most certainly is one of those things that you have to use before you can see the purpose/point of the whole thing. I know that I started with the pretty boring tweets - lunch, random thoughts, pointless information - but I'd like to think for the most part I have moved on from such things and as much as I get from the people I follow, hopefully my followers get something out of my Tweets. Don't get me wrong, a good deal of my tweets are still absolutely pointless, but I love it.

So, I would take a guess that of the 300 odd people I follow I have met/know maybe 50 of them. If I'm lucky. That doesn't mean that I haven't forged a relationship with others, whether about music or advertising or something else, there is generally a conversation that can be had with most of them.

Then something very interesting happened last weekend. I randomly checked Twitter and saw a tweet from @adlandsuit (whose profile tells of him "I'm a senior Suit at a London Top 10 Advertising Agency.")

I thought to myself, hey, that's a pretty amazing idea. And when he later tweeted that he would send internationally, I decided to get in on that action. I want a postcard from Edinburgh! Love postcards, so I DM'ed him my address.

According to his blog, he "posted cards to all parts of the UK, to Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand" and requested that if the postcards turned up that we let him know. Well, wouldn't you know it, got home after a wonderful night of partying in the small hours of Friday night/Saturday morning, and there is was, so I did as asked, and sent him a twitpic:

I guess the point to all of this ramble, is that I like the fact that when you boil it down, Twitter is actually quite a personal medium to communicate with people. While I have a Facebook page and use Facebook as a social network, it is all very focused around friends whom I have known, in the real world, for quite some time. Twitter gives (I think) a better opportunity to talk to people that you have never met, and then use the people that tweet things of interest, to pick up other people to follow.

And the other point is that I am amazed by @adlandsuit's idea. Having over 1,200 followers, he could have been writing postcards all day if everyone had sent him an address. It is a thoughtful gesture from someone who is completely faceless (like really faceless, he's just a suit).

Speaking of thoughtful gestures, it is Random Act of Kindness day tomorrow. I have my random act of kindness all planned out. What are you going to do??