Opera to Put User's Face in Times Square

An anonymous reader writes "Opera has announced that they will be putting one lucky user's face up in Times Square during the New Year's Eve celebrations. The ABC SuperSign will display the winner of of Opera's most recent contest that only requires a submission of your picture and the reason why you should be chosen as their New Year's mascot. Nearly one million partygoers will witness the super sized fan tribute with the Opera browser logo on the 585 square foot (that's 54 square meters!) screen."

and then what? they'll usurp firefox?

[passingNotes.com]

the big banner should just say, "we used to cost money, but now we're free even though many web sites don't display properly, but do note that we invented lots of cool ideas that were adopted by all of our competitors and most people don't know this but most of our core marketing team is in the southern USA area and also we have this mobile browser accelerator that nobody even really uses much because it only works on like ten phones"...and the winner of this contest will be: ideally thin, caucasian and with a hip "opera user look" that the company can deploy in a larger integrated campaign. mark my words: no fat people, burn victims or others in that category of "couldn't work for abercrombie" will win...in fact, my guess is that the winner will be employed by either starbucks or abercrombie, age 22-26, female (tech influencers right now), shoulder length hair that's dark, thin and with a natural look light on cosmetics and wearing only solid colors on the billboard because it will create better contrast with the opera logo...

How is that a prize?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm just a hopeless introverted nerd but I don't know if I can think of any reason you'd want this to happen to you.

Why?

[JMUChrisF]

Why would I want that?

I don't want millions of people telling me how funny looking I am. It's not like I'd get a high paying job out of it or my own TV show on ABC.

Doesn't sound appealing to me, but I guess I'm not vain enough.

Re:I already submitted

[daniel_newton]

the legend of goatse has made me too afraid to visit links such as these.. I guess Ill never get the joke

Re:and then what? they'll usurp firefox?

[StateOfTheUnion]

I couldn't agree more . . . And to make matters worse, I just went to the forum [opera.com] where you can see uploaded pictures for the contest. If the 7 (yes that's right . . . seven) people that uploaded pictures as of the time that I visited the forum are any representation of Opera users, then I think that this ad campaign isn't going to get the demographically perfect person . . . Or at least not the demographically perfect person from a marketing perspective (stereotypically youthful, saavy, successful, and of course good looking with a look that implies professional or student in a way that would inspire people to use opera). And I have to agree with the parent post that the winner will probably be female . . . except there were no female pictures when I checked.

Of course opening your eyes, smiling, and focusing the camera would have helped . . .

Example 1 [opera.com] Example 2 [opera.com] Example 3 [opera.com]

Re:and then what? they'll usurp firefox?

[hkmwbz]

"I couldn't agree more . . ."

With what, exactly?

"And to make matters worse, I just went to the forum where you can see uploaded pictures for the contest. If the 7 (yes that's right . . . seven) people that uploaded pictures as of the time that I visited the forum are any representation of Opera users, then I think that this ad campaign isn't going to get the demographically perfect person . . ."

You are assuming that Opera is looking for the "perfect person". This isn't a huge corporation we are talking about. It's a tiny company from Northern Europe which isn't exactly known for its bragging.

You obviously don't know anything about Opera Software. They are doing this as a thank you to their community, and they've just turned 10. Yes, the company has been around for ten years, and only now are they starting to do this kind of thing.

Cynicism is good, but you are just proving your ignorance. Opera keeps in touch with its users. How often do you see Mozilla employees/representatives answering support questions over at MozillaZine?

Oh, and there are lots more than seven people there.

Re:Just another shameless Opera plug...

[taskforce]

Compared to Firefox, Opera innovates far more. Tabbed Browsing, Interface Customisability: even the principles used in the design of Gmail - Opera is far ahead.

Firefox is great becuase it has had such excellent marketing and is diversifying the browser genepool away from IE; but as an acutal browser Opera tends to be the far more innovative, responsive, faster and generally a better program.

Re:Here's my entry

[XnavxeMiyyep]

Nobody really cares enough (I hope) to waste their time recompiling a list for you.
We'll see about that!

Opera features
Efficient surfing
Tabbed browsing: Surf the Web easier and faster by opening multiple Web pages within the same application window.

Integrated search: Search Google, eBay, Amazon and more with Opera's integrated search. You can also search directly in the address field using shortcuts (e.g. "g" for Google).

Pop-up blocking: Opera lets you control whether to block all pop-ups, or open only the ones that you have requested.

Fast Forward: Fast Forward will detect the most likely "next page" link and greatly simplify navigation in multi-page documents.

Password manager: Opera's password manager remembers your usernames and passwords so you will not have to.

Sessions: Save a collection of open pages as a session, for later retrieval, or start with the pages you had open when Opera was last closed.

Mouse gestures: Opera supports mouse gestures, allowing you to perform certain movements with the mouse in order to access commonly used features.

Quick preferences: Pressing F12 displays Opera's 'Quick preferences' menu to easily switch settings such as browser authentication, pop-up and cookie preferences.

Notes: Notes can be kept in conjunction with a Web site you want to refer to later, to remind you of any particular information you may like to review again.

Voice: The voice feature allows you to control Opera's interface by talking and to have documents read aloud. Voice is currently offered in English and runs on Windows 2000 and XP.

Security and privacy
Security bar: Opera displays security information inside the address bar, located next to the padlock icon that indicates the level of security present on a site.

Encryption: Opera supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL) versions 2 and 3, and TLS. Opera offers automatic 128-bit encryption, the highest available security of any Web browser.

Delete private data: Opera can be configured to clear the history and cache when exiting, to protect your privacy. Any kind of private data can easily be erased at any time.

Cookie control: Opera gives you detailed control of what cookies to accept and reject, such as allowing for different set-ups for different servers.

Mail and Chat
Opera mail: Opera's built-in POP/IMAP E-mail client is a combined e-mail program, news reader, mailing list organizer and RSS/Atom newsfeed reader.

IRC chat: Communicate with people all over the world using Opera's IRC chat client. Chat privately or in rooms, or share files with your friends and family.

Customization
Drag and drop: Using the 'appearance' dialog you can make Opera look almost any way you want. Move buttons and search fields, add and remove toolbars, and so forth.

Skins: Opera skins can give your browser the look you want. Make the browser your own by giving it the icons and buttons of your choice.

Language: Opera's user interface is translated into a multitude of languages, and the language can be changed on the fly.

Accessibility
Zoom: With Opera you can zoom the contents of any Web page from 20%-1000% using the zoom dropdown or the + and - keys.

Text size and colors: Text size and link styling can be changed using Opera. Text color and background color can also be customized.

User style sheets: Opera comes with a set of ready-made style sheets, including accessibility style, that can be used to override a Web site's style set completely.

Web development
Standards support: Opera prides itself in supporting all major Web standards currently in use, including CSS 2.1, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, WML 2.0, ECMAScript, DOM 2 and SVG 1.1 tiny.

Small-screen mode: When displaying a page in small-screen mode (Shift+F11) you can see how it will look on a mobile phone or other small-scre