Okay, this is kind of hilarious. As Bleeding Cool points out, DC Comics appears to have bought “Marvel” as a keyword on Twitter, which means that anyone searching for “Marvel” will find… well, this:
Interestingly enough, it appears that DC only bought “Marvel” – Searches for “Image Comics,” “Image,” “IDW,” “Dark Horse,” “comic” and “comics” didn’t turn up any promoted DC tweets. In other words, this was kind of personal. How long before we see a Marvel retaliation?
September 9th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
I don’t Twitter. I don’t even know HOW to Twitter. But this does crack me up.
Well played, DC. Well played.
September 11th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
I love this!! After all the childish behavior on Marvel’s part regarding anything DC over the last few years…they deserve any retaliation DC dishes out! GO DC!!
September 11th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
It won’t do DC any good. Marvel will just whip out the big publicity guns and bury DC.
September 11th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Marvel loves to have promotions where you send them DC comics with ripped off covers, and Quesada takes every opportunity he can to bash DC. They are the last ones that should complain about dirty tactics.
September 11th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Is it a joke or does it smack of desperation?
September 11th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
And @Michael E, DC is killing right now with the new 52. Looks to me like they have the big guns now.
September 11th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Somebody is desperate, looks like to me.
September 11th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Really? I’ve tryed that and nothing strange appears. You search Marvel and you find Marvel word in recent tweets. This looks to be a fake.
September 11th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
That’s how business works
September 11th, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Considering that for the last few decades, DC hasn’t been allowed to put Captain Marvel’s name on DC books featuring the character, I don’t feel too sorry for them.
September 11th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
How do you “buy” a keyword on Twitter? I thought the only keyword were hashtagged word that anyone could use to associate a post with a topic. Can you actually buy a tag? Unless I’m mistaken, this sounds a bit confused.
September 11th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
A punk move and sounds like desperation…DC is making news with this new 52…but by issue 3 of there new books…people will only be buying Batman and Green Lantern again and everything else in the top 25 will be Marvel.
It is way to early to call this a success…Jeez…the XFL had over 10 million people watching the first episode…by week 4 it had less than 600,000 people watching…
September 11th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Hilarious…..
September 11th, 2011 at 2:06 pm
I think that’s hilarious.
I tried it and, while Marvel Entertainment’s Twitter feed did come up (#3, with Stan Lee being #2), DC did indeed come up on top. A search for #marvel resulted in DC at #1 followed by Marvel at #2.
It is a pretty good response to all the “send in DC’s with ripped off covers for variants of Deadpool” stuff, I must say.
September 11th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
It’s competitive bidding on keywords, no different than AdWords or proper contextual SEO, really. Further, the promoted tweet will die off if people aren’t retweeting it, clicking on it, following the avatar, etc. Since they’re contextually similar, advertisers will allow it–No different than saying “McDonalds is better than Burger King,” just simple competitive advertising. It’s relatively new too, so DC trying it out is fine and dandy, whether it helps them or hurts them will take awhile to notice.
September 11th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
wtf? marvel kicks the crap out of DC
September 11th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Just more childish crap from a bunch of childish twits. No one at either DC or Marvel has any concept of what true professionalism is anymore. To them, it’s now all lies and “screw you” one-upmanship games.
September 11th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Kinda funny, since I think all the DC books have been Mavel-ized with the new 52. Just an observation.
September 11th, 2011 at 3:01 pm
@Raul – totally agree. You hardly read a Marvel exec interview without sitting through a tirade of DC-bashing/our opinion of what DC’s doing etc. And hey, if it had been IDW or Image doing this to Marvel everyone would be cheering. Well DC is equally below Marvel – Marvel outsells them month after month – why shouldn’t the underdog try to get a competitive advantage.
September 11th, 2011 at 3:31 pm
DC is always desperate,hence why they seem to have a crisis every 5 years. After about 4 months of sales on Nu 52 Marvel will take back the lionshare of the sales as always.We should all just call it what it really is. Marvel lite…since after all they are now making the public be afraid of superhero’s. Wow,big move from DC by copying the way the Marvel Universe acts. Only moves I see here being done is DC copying a concept by Marvel comics and then doing their best to try it over and over.
DC comics is the only company to have to reboot their continuity twice. How sad is that???
September 11th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
DC is soooo original, o wait they copied that idea from Battlefield when they bought the Mw3 website, just like they copy their charcters from Marvel
September 11th, 2011 at 4:50 pm
After 40 years of reading comics, my observation is: the Nu52 reads like the Marvel Universe, so far.
September 11th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
DC copy characters from Marvel???? Now, that’s funny…..LMBO!!!!!
Hmmm…let’s see…. Vision/ Martian Manhunter…Supreme Squad/Justice League….Quicksilver/Flash…Mr. Fantastic/Elongated Man…I could go on, but I think you might get the idea….
September 11th, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Well played. Whats happened here is Marvel failure, not DCs win. Back when they changed from Timely to Marvel they created characters with every version of Marvel in their name just to own the word re characters. So its amazing that when twitter came on they didn’t snapn that up… unless DC grabbed it when twitter came online and have been sitting on it. Even more amazing is that Marvel have the superior web marketing presence generally, so it really is a coup that they overlooked this.
Next step is to link ‘Marvel’ with the Shazam Character when (if) that gets back up and running.
September 11th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
I’m pretty positive that marvel had a special, “tear off a cover of a flashpoint and send it in: marvel will send you a copy of fear itself”. So, is this really dirty pool? Its not harmful or mean spirited, just a ploy to get some face time.
April 21st, 2012 at 12:02 am
Interestingly enough, it appears that DC only bought “Marvel” – Searches for “Image Comics,” “Image,”