What Makes An Online Giveaway Fair Anyway?

Posted on 12. Nov, 2007 by in Audience Analytics

The second extension of the deadline for the first British iPhone Giveaway to midnight on Friday 16th November has inspired some interesting comments including this one which suggested that extending the deadline and implementing a fairer entry system would damage the competition’s credibility.

My response to that is that the competition is still open and the prize still up for grabs.

The deadline extension does not penalise anyone who has already entered.

This is an important point.

Due to the problems with negative comment voting, most of the entries in the competition have only received ‘negative votes’ so far which suggests that people are intentionally voting down entries. Hopefully, enabling only positive votes for comments should right this.

Ben then pointed out that popular tech websites like TechCrunch select winners randomly or using an ‘Editor Picks’ type process.

Fair comment.

However, tech sites like Engadget and TechCrunch are both hugely popular for their great coverage of tech related and web 2.0 related news. Both may well choose to reward their very large readership by running regular giveaways in which a winner is selected randomly.

That would certainly be the most efficient way of selecting a giveaway winner on Engadget, the top listed blog on the web, Technorati, blog popularity tracker.

Both comments got me thinking, though.

My objective for running this iPhone giveaway is to find the best suggestion for a TV show to watch on an iPhone.

I would prefer to select the winner based on readers’ votes for each entry.

However, I’m not sure how workable this solution would be in practice as voters are not required to login first to vote.

So… to conclude, I’m moving ahead with enabling only positive voting of comments and keeping a close eye on developments. It’ll be interesting to see what effect this has on entries.

Like I said to Ben, this giveaway has already taken more time than I had allocated for it.

It’s been a very interesting ride so far though.

Thanks again to all that have entered. It is still on…

What are your thoughts on the deadline extension?

Your comments welcomed as always.

Related posts:

  1. British iPhone Giveaway: Summary of Events
  2. Day 8 of the First British iPhone Giveaway
  3. Day 10 of the First British iPhone Giveaway
  4. Announcing the Winner of the First British iPhone Giveaway
  5. How To Vote in the First British iPhone Giveaway

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  • Imran

    Hi Chi-chi Ekweozor,

    I’m glad you have taken my advice, could i also make another suggestion..

    By going the “thumbs up” way, i really think you should reset the voting for each entry. I say this because, its unfair for some people who are on -24. These ppl also deserve a fair chance and the competition.

    With new competition rules, we now should have a fresh competition, start over on a level plain.

    Let me know what you think.

    cheers

  • Edward

    I agree Imran, but Chi-Chi i noticed you still can add “thumbs down”!!!

    I am really confused now, i thought we can only add “thumbs up”????

    Please clarify. Thanks

  • http://www.realfresh.tv Chi-chi Ekweozor

    @Imran and @Edward
    Thanks so much for your kind recommendations.

    Yes, resetting the votes had always been part of the plan.

    See the latest update below about when the changes allowing only positive voting on the site will be live:

    http://www.realfresh.tv/day-9-of-the-first-british-iphone-giveaway/

    Thanks so much for your patience.

  • http://www.realfresh.tv/day-9-of-the-first-british-iphone-giveaway/ Real Fresh TV |  Day 9 of the First British iPhone Giveaway

    [...] to reset all the votes to zero first to level the playing field. Thanks for the recommendation, Imran and Edward, it had always been part of the [...]