Local man, grilled on niceness, gets coal

Coal gets a bad rap around the holidays, so the makers of Kingsford Charcoal are turning the classic punishment into a great reward - by giving the nicest person in social media - who happens to hail from Waukesha - the gift of coal.

After analyzing more than 100 billion tweets in partnership with social media monitoring company Sysomos, Kingsford determined that Waukesha resident, IT professional, and part-time wine blogger Clifford Brown is the "Nicest Person in Social Media" in 2012.

Engineers wrote a unique script to analyze who tweeted "please," "thank you," and "thanks" the most often during the past year. Clifford's "nice score" was off the charts for 2012: he tweeted using the words "please," "thanks" and "thank you" for a total of 1,574 times this year! He's also an avid griller - he tweeted 93 times this year about grilling (using the words "grilling," "grilled" or "grill").

Santa will made a stop at Clifford's house early this year, at 7:30 a.m. last Friday, to present him with a year's supply of Kingsford charcoal, a grill and grilling tools.

Coal for those on the nice list doesn't stop with Clifford this holiday season, as Kingsford and Sysomos are asking America who they think are the nicest people in social media.

Consumers are asked to tweet #benicegetcoal to put themselves or another do-gooder on Santa's nice list. A winner from this list will be selected at random and receive a year's supply of coal and a kettle grill. Consumers can also get discounts on grilling merchandise and accessories by joining the Kingsford community atgrilling.com.