A small, UK-based company that offers a free, DIY Web site builder came very close to blowing up Twitter earlier this month with a viral marketing campaign that, at one point, was generating 10,000 tweets an hour (about 165 tweets a minute) and outranked Michael Jackson and Iran in Twitter's trends.

The company is Moonfruit, and to celebrate their 10th anniversary they decided to give away 10 MacBook Pros in random drawings to people who put #moonfruit in a Twitter tweet each day – originally, according to the plan, for 10 days.

How well did it work? It was overwhelmingly successful. As a matter of fact, Lisa Barone thinks they got more success than they could handle. She seems some valuable marketing lessons in the experiences – among them, be ready if your marketing plan actually succeeds.

Checkout her article, and be sure to read the comments; one of them is from a representative of Moonfruit.

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