“”Everyone Has a Story”” is a weekly segment in the Arizona Daily Wildcat aiming to tell the story of an interesting person on the UA campus. This week, the Daily Wildcat interviewed Torry Brouillard-Bruce, the assistant director of the Hall Operations and Student Staff Recruitment and Training of Residential Education.
Bruce’s passion for social networking websites won him an all-expense-paid vacation to Dallas, Texas, this past weekend.
“”I’m a bit of a Twitter junkie so I follow Southwest Airlines,”” he said. “”They put up a question about two weeks ago asking, ‘Why you would rather be golfing than working,’ because they (had) their big charity golf tournament this past weekend for the Ronald McDonald House. I put a Twitter message out there and used the hashtag ‘LUVclassic’ because that’s what you had to do and scored the free trip.””
A hashtag is a tag that is used on Twitter by inserting the “”#”” symbol before a word. It allows Twitter to categorize posts and users to search and follow the tweeted topic.
“”I said, ‘I would rather be at the ball park than the dentist, I’d rather pay nothing for bags than $120 and I’d rather be golfing than working,’ and then I put the hastag ‘LUVclassic.'”” Bruce said
Southwest Airlines has over 1 million followers on Twitter, but they only follow about 6,000 people. Shortly after his tweet, Southwest Airlines requested to follow Bruce on Twitter.
“”They followed me because you can then send a direct message, which is the third realm of Twitter,”” Bruce said. “”You got the ‘@replies,’ the ‘hashtag’ and the direct message. The direct message is a way to send a message to one person that only they can see. An hour after following me, they sent me a direct message saying, ‘Congratulations, you won.'””
Bruce and his girlfriend received free flights, two nights at the Grand Hyatt DFW in Dallas, were able to take part in the golf tournament and a huge party afterwards, which was all paid for by Southwest Airlines.
Social networking sites, for Bruce, have helped him connect with others in ways that he would not have been able to sitting in an office.
“”I have tried to stay ahead of the curve with technology,”” he said. “”It was interesting, I started Facebook in 2004 when it first kicked off … and then as soon as Twitter started going off, it seemed like an awesome opportunity to stay connected with people, to get messages out there and to see what people are doing.””
In addition to Facebook and Twitter, Bruce is also an avid Foursquare user.
“”Foursquare is essentially a tagging moniker used around the world,”” he said. “”Literally you show up someplace, you go onto Foursquare and say, ‘Hey, guess what? I’m here,’ and people can see where you’re at. It’s a way to communicate who is where and who is doing what.””
If you frequently visit a location, you can become “”mayor”” of that location. Bruce is currently mayor of five places, but it changes on a daily basis depending on who else is using Foursquare in that location, he said.
“”For awhile I was the mayor of this building, ‘El Portal’ until my administrative assistant took me over,”” Bruce said.
Bruce considers Foursquare a competition and is determined to become the mayor of El Portal once again.
