Using a few related keywords and combining it with “merchant.mvc” I was able to find numerous sites that fell into my thought process. Fun sites – toys for kids, toys for grown ups (the G-rated kind). Fur sites – great stuff for dogs and cats.

For feather sites, I already knew of something unique, unusual, and fun – Avian Fashions – Home of the Revolutionary Bird Diaper, the FlightSuit! I have know about this feathers site for over ten years now. It has always been loaded with fun. The site has great step-by-step cartoons that guide you through how to put their product – a bird diaper – on your bird. They make use of video clips, a blog and Twitter, how could that not be considered fun?

While I was hunting for furry sites, another “F” type site came to mind – Faith. Perhaps because I have had the opportunity to work on a Priest’s site, a Rabbi’s site, a Deacon’s site, a group of Nun’s and to work at EWTN – the largest religious media network in the world. So I search for a few sites of faith that also used Miva Merchant.

I found myself narrowing my list of sites down to 15 to keep the post manageable. Some of sites didn’t play nicely with ScreenGrab so I resorted to my most favor key combination on a Mac ?-shift-4 which let me drag and capture the portion of my screen that I wanted.

With text and images completed, I submitted my article for publication. It is with great pleasure, I share with you Get Smart – 15 Fun & Quirky Ecommerce Designs*

*it should be noted my submitted title was Finding Fun, Fur and Feathers using Miva Merchant

Conan aka @ConanOBrien, is not the first celebrity to use Twitter, remember Ashton Kutcher aka @aplusk? He has over 4.6 million followers and has helped to put Twitter into the media spotlight. Ellen DeGeneres jumped in too as @TheEllenShow. I’m sure you can think of many other famous faces that have joined the Twitter revolution, including the White House @whitehouse. Time Magazine even did an article about it Obama and Twitter: White House Social-Networking More recently Philip Elliott wrote White House tweeting spreads president’s message

With the influx of stars and familiar faces into Twitter, Twitter has created Verified Account:

We’re starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion. (For example, well-known artists, athletes, actors, public officials, and public agencies)

It’s rather obvious why, if you misspell Conan O’Brien’s name when looking for him on Twitter, you’ll find some wanna be.

So who knows, you might just become the next social media darling. Keep on tweeting and don’t forget to follow @lesliekirk.

The Clearing the Air blog goes into detail explaining the all the online avenues customers can follow. On Facebook they have the World’s Best Cat Litter – Official Page. The Facebook fan page has their Twitter link to World’s Best (bestcatlitter) on Twitter. The blog page also has their Twitter link, along with great reasons why you should follow them.

While the letter I received only mentioned the “big three”, World’s Best Cat Litter™ has an excellent grasp on all of the social media tools. They make it very easy to subscribe to their electronic newsletter – Inside Scoop and their Clearing the Air RSS feed. But they didn’t stop there, they also encourage their customers to “watch and learn more about our litter” on YouTube.

So I was able to stop by the link mentioned in the letter and sign up for my coupons which, ironically, will be mailed to me. I took a little spin around their website, as they wanted me to do, and noticed the Community Customer Rewards program was still online with no mention of it being discontinued. That was the only thing I saw which was out of alignment with an outstanding launch into social media.