Contagious Media Showdown

Philipp Lenssen writes "In the Contagious Media Showdown, competitors plant addictive memes to see who's best at viral marketing. The contest pages officially launched yesterday. The grand prize (most unique visitors) is $2000, with three other prizes at $1000 each for most links, most popular entry with a Creative Commons license, or first site with an Alexa ranking higher than 20,000."

Winning strategy No. 1:

[James_G]

Get linked from Slashdot.

Re:Winning strategy No. 1:

[ShinSugoi]

Wouldn't being aware that it was a meme in the first place reduce the effect on the audience? I imagine for these things to be truly effective, you have to be unaware of their purpose.

Winning strategy No. 2

[RobotRunAmok]

Round up everyone who still drop the word "meme" into conversation and beat them bloody with aluminum softball bats.

Alright, alright, it may not be much of a "strategy" but words can't express how good it would feel.

Re:Winning strategy No. 2

[Soybean47]

The worst part about the whole "meme" phenomenon was that it was hard to complain about it without calling it a "meme." As in, "The 'meme' meme is the most annoying meme ever memed!"

Re:Winning strategy No. 2

[Nasarius]

Ah, "meme" and "blogosphere". Two keywords which indicate that whatever you're reading is absolute trash.

It's disappointing to see how meme has devolved from a real word [reference.com] coined by Richard Dawkins, to a generic term meaning little more than "thing".

Re:Winning strategy No. 2

[tool462]

Come on, what's wrong with "meme?" You need to change your paradigm or you'll find yourself unable to synergize and compete with the mindshare of more proactive entities. Contemporize, man.

Re:Winning strategy No. 2

[meme_police]

I was about to mod this whole story down due to cliched and irrelevant usage of "meme".

Now THIS is contagious

[qwasty]

I think they're going to have a hard time coming up with something more contagious than the dirty guy [thedirtyguy.com].

Re:Winning strategy No. 1:

[NoInfo]

This is the best one:
http://ipjusticeleague.com/ [ipjusticeleague.com]

My own entry...

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Cowboyneal's Boobies.

My own entry...

[PopeAlien]

Why? does he have Trucker Boobs? [bugshit.com]

Excellent excerpt

[benhocking]

"We've documented over one hundred cases of male truck drivers suffering from uncontrollable lactation."

Re:Excellent excerpt

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh good. Less reason for them to pull over for a drink.

Re:My own entry...

[networkBoy]

goodness me.
I would have never, ever guessed. BTW is this a joke?
-nB

Re:My own entry...

[PopeAlien]

goodness me.
I would have never, ever guessed. BTW is this a joke?

Uncontrollable trucker lactation is a real problem. It is as serious as the issue of auto-ocular Ingestion in small dogs. [bugshit.com]

Re:My own entry...

[EnronHaliburton2004]

I would have never, ever guessed. BTW is this a joke?

I dare say these posts are part of the contest :)

Re:My own entry...

[Ateryx]

Viral: Check
Marketing: Incomplete

Just another SEO contest?

[dos_dude]

Viral marketing? Addictive memes?

Sounds like just another SEO contest to me. The only twist: not every one needs to use the same stupid made-up keyword.

Re:Just another SEO contest?

[donnyspi]

it sounds more like "Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell to me

Re:Just another SEO contest?

[lukewarmfusion]

Viral marketing relies on the merit of the actual content to spread, not on techniques to gain exposure.

The art of SEO also changes frequently as search engines try to avoid abuse. A quality viral marketing campaign can be effective whether or not you keep up on the latest "techniques."

I'd rather save a good viral marketing idea for a paying client, though. Unless you're trying to make a name for yourself, the prize money at stake is nothing compared to the profits from real client.

Re:Just another SEO contest?

[dos_dude]

The difference isn't that hard to see when you look at the concept. But when it comes to the methods of measuring success, it gets quite blury.

Re:Just another SEO contest?

[lukewarmfusion]

I see what you're saying... you're right, and since the goal is generally the same the methods would be too.

WARNING!

[Capt'n Hector]

Do NOT click here what EVER you do, do NOT CLICK on the following link!

DEATH RAY OF DOOM [google.com]

How's that for clickability? Come oooon, you know you want to...

Re:WARNING!

[CypherXero]

I guess you forgot about how slashdot works, in that the domain is listed to the right of a link.

Re:WARNING!

[stevesliva]

I don't have to click-- my Google Web Accelerator has already prefetched the link... WTF?!?! Who the hell is stevesliva?

Re:WARNING!

[goldspider]

*sigh* and I thought we, as a society, were past the Goatse landmines...

Alexa rank can be easily manipulated

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several places to "buy" a high Alexa rank.
All they need are hits to their counting script. It's not like the Google rank which is externally weighted, you can put an exit pop-up on a website, or even just an iframe and push visitors from anywhere through alexa's counter.

My entry was called contagious media

[Anonymous Coward]

All proceeds go to help fund MPAA/RIAA efforts. Thank you for your help.

Contest site is flawed

[It doesn't come easy]

The contest site presentation is flawed (and therefore in this case the contest has been invalidated IMHO). By displaying and sorting links to the websites involved in the competition by rank, they are driving the leader's scores up (because people will tend to click on the leading links to see why everyone else thought it was so cool).

They should have simply supplied the link in a non-discrinating sort (such as alpabetical) and a very brief description of the site's theme. The ranking should not have been displayed until after the contest was completed.

Re:Contest site is flawed

[Chris Pimlott]

Hell, if this is supposed to be a real viral meme contest, they shouldn't have the pages listed on the contest page at all until after the contest is over.

Re:Contest site is flawed

[It doesn't come easy]

I agree but the contest would probably take too long if that were the case.

Re:Contest site is flawed

[msaulters]

I agree, but just as glad that I can peruse the entries now w/o waiting. As for the rankings... I'm looking at ALL the entries, and find that most of the top ones are crap. That will likely change as the contest progresses, because if it works right, more people are likely to visit the sites based on referrals from friends than by the limited publicity the contest itself has had.

Slashdot has a big user base, but it's really nothing compared to the sheer massive numbers of people out there waiting to be p

Re:Contest site is flawed

[Nytewynd]

Any order at all is flawed. Alphabetical order only means that Aaron's House of Tacos will be the first clicked link most of the time.

To truely show the sites but not promote anyone, they would need to randomly order the links each time the page is displayed.

Aardvark on fire

[benhocking]

Nonsense! My "aardvark on fire" will beat out "Aaron's House of Tacos"!

Re:Aardvark on fire

[Nytewynd]

Good Grief! I lost the contagious battle. Luckily I have many other things classified as contagious.

Re:Aardvark on fire

[It doesn't come easy]

Or Girls who love Geeks [nakedsmartchicks.com] will always beat out Fun with your new head [hootisland.com] anyday.

Be honest...

[It doesn't come easy]

How many clicked on the "Girls who love Geeks" link first? (the other link is better)

Re:Be honest...

[DrWhizBang]

I expect these are not safe for work? I'm not going to click to find out...

Re:Contest site is flawed

[BillX]

Welcome to aaaaaaaaaaaaa.com!

Re:Contest site is flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

This is at least the second time you've recently advertised for shinyfeet.com and made sure you include your little referer url. How cute.

Re:Contest site is flawed

[kbeech]

It would be interesting to see whether the winning sites were propelled to the top more via Slashdot or BoingBoing. CryingWhileEating and IP Justice League are already linked from BoingBoing.

Re:Contest site is flawed

[ampathee]

Even better, how difficult would it be to randomly shuffle them each time the page is requested? Even with alphabetical order, many people will just click number one.. this would at least give everyone a chance at these clicks, hopefully eliminating their effect.

Re:Contest site is flawed

[norle]

Alphabetical IS discriminitory by its very nature. Ask the lowly 'Z' how he feels about it.. True non-discrimination needs to be completely and arbitrarily random.

Re:Contest site is flawed

[NoInfo]

I'm not sure why the #1 is at first place, the best one is:

ipjusticeleague.com [ipjusticeleague.com]

I just lost the game!

[meatflower]

I just lost the game.
Reading this reminded me of something else that fits in the same realm as viral marketing, and that is The Game, a viral social phenomen. Confused? [wikipedia.org]

Re:I just lost the game!

[archaeology_andy]

GAH! four months, I was winning.....

Re:I just lost the game!

[01000011011101000111]

You. Utter. Bastard.
There goes nearly a year's worth of not thinking about the game :(

Re:I just lost the game!

[hanshotfirst]

Dammit now I can lose the game. I hope I forget before it annoys the crap out of me.

Re:I just lost the game!

[ahem]

Colin.

If you want the most unique visitors

[FidelCatsro]

"Free Lesbian porn , hot naked girls on motor bikes " as a title .
then after that when someone clicks on the page ,, a big bold "Can not be found here , but what we do have is..." no-one is going to return and if the "But what we do have is.. " bit is intresting then you will get lots of links by people who found it funny and were not too narked off you didn't have a heap load of porn
Simple principle of marketing "Sex sells". Simple principle of the internet "Its full of porn"

Re:If you want the most unique visitors

[zxnos]

did somebody say: free lesbian porn? [google.com]

Re:If you want the most unique visitors

[RobertB-DC]

Simple principle of marketing "Sex sells". Simple principle of the internet "Its full of porn"

I was going to dash off a reply saying that such an entry would violate the TOS, but this is all they got:
"3) Your entry must comply with Datagram's terms of use.
See http://www.datagram.com/acceptable.html [datagram.com] for more details. Please refrain from submitting hardcore pornography or illegal content of any kind."

The Datagram.com page looks like the standard "don't break the law, dammit" requirement, and doesn't mentio

Re:I think Slashdot just skewed the results

[SComps]

so click on the bottom link, and root for the underdogs!

Re:I think Slashdot just skewed the results

[LiquidCoooled]

*Tinfoil hat area*

The page itself is Phillip Lenssen's own entry to the competition.
The real competition page doesn't even list the participants ;)

Re:I think Slashdot just skewed the results

[gubbas]

Maybe we all should click the links in reverse popular order. That will show them.

Re:I think Slashdot just skewed the results

[JaF893]

I think its a bit harsh modding me down as redundant when the other people posted only two minutes before me :)

2 minutes before:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150148&cid=12 5 91378 [slashdot.org]
1 minute before:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150148&cid=125 91395 [slashdot.org]

Damn you /.

[kid-noodle]

Yeah. You bastards. I'm blaming /. when my entry [contagiousmedia.org] comes last!

(And yes, I have heard of grouphug.us, and I have heard of it as of yesterday.)

Re:Why the up-to-date list?

[Qa32]

Ya, that's precisely why you should be ahead of your game and click the bottom few links and not give credit to the top few...like I did!!

Stop whining

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

To all the people whining about it being on slashdot, the link is to a site with ALL of the afoe mentioned sites..

Although, this 'contest' isn't really a contest... It would have been better to do it in a controlled manner, let the sites spread by word of mouth et cetera.

Re:Stop whining

[It doesn't come easy]

Yeah, but...

It is a contest because real money is involved (and, looking at some of the sites, $2000 looks to be a year's worth of development).
The contest has been biased toward the leading sites because of the way they are presented.

No way to fix it now, either. Hope the sites didn't pay anything to be in the contest (even a token fee should be refunded).

Re:Stop whining

[Nytewynd]

The link on slashdot is ok, but it leads to the rankings. I know some others said they clicked on the number 1 site, and I did also. It's based on the curiosity of what the number 1 site looks like.

Re:Stop whining

[winkydink]

Try clicking on the Submitter link

Game Over

[xfmr_expert]

With the "Rankings" list linked off the frontpage of Slashdot, many thousands will see the rankings list wondering what the heck this thing is about. They will then do the next logical thing and click on the top entry, or few entries, in the ranking list. Viola! Game Over. (and the experiment results questionable at best)

Showdown

[Ribbo.com]

could be interesting to do a slashdot vs Fark viral marketing showdown. See who comes out tops.

Here's One

[glamslam]

Here is one I like http://scavenger.contagiousmedia.org/ [contagiousmedia.org] from a guy that is doing a cool adaptation http://phiffer.org/tiddly/ [phiffer.org] of Tiddly Wiki http://tiddlywiki.com/ [tiddlywiki.com] --which is just plain cool.

User agents

[pjbgravely]

Check out the user agents for the #1 site.
http://cryingwhileeating.com/plesk-stat/webstat/us age_200505.html#DAYSTATS [cryingwhileeating.com]
Strange!

F:F:F

[Shky]

William Gibon's book Pattern Recognition [amazon.com] deals heavily with viral marketing and the creation of subcultures. It's a pretty interesting read, and a definite departure from his other stuff (his only book written in the present day).

Re:F:F:F

[Anonymous Coward]

Good book, I really dug this one.

viral marketing

[ch-chuck]

so that explains why I wear a brain condom while watching tv / listening to radio / etc /

'meme'

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that word doesn't mean what you think it does.

But it sure sounds cool, huh?

wait a minute...

[bnitsua]

isn't this, in itself, a meme? :)

RetroVirus

[Doc Ruby]

What a great idea! I'm going to start my own "Contagious Media Showdown".

Change the results...

[It doesn't come easy]

Everybody, let's all click on the lowest ranking site together...

Ready, one, two, three, go!!!!

Re:Change the results...

[Ribbo.com]

Until he becomes second lowest, eventually ending some weeks later with everyone on the same number of votes and the competition organisers scratching their heads.

Re:Change the results...

[quintiusc]

Ahh, nothing like screwing with poll results. It makes me feel like the American media.

Re:Change the results...

[michaelhood]

I don't think it'll help, since none of us are lame enough to have Alexa toolbar installed. :) (Alexa ranking is only judged off people who have their toolbar installed.)

Slashdot Scooped by NPR

[geomon]

NPR covered this story yesterday. [npr.org]

Re:Slashdot Scooped by NPR

[winkydink]

This is nothing new. If you're a news junkie, you'll see that Slashdot tends to trail the mainstream media by 24-48 hours.

Re:Slashdot Scooped by NPR

[IronicCheese]

Dude, EVERYTHING in Slashdot is "scooped" by someone. The whole POINT of Slashdot is that it points off to news and stories that are pointed out by other news-gathering and aggregating sources.

Or does Slashdot have a team of primary source journalists that we don't know about?

Re:Slashdot Scooped by NPR

[geomon]

Dude, EVERYTHING in Slashdot is "scooped" by someone.

I should be more explict when posting what I believed to be a tongue-in-cheek jab at our geekyness.

Considering the fact that most of NPR's audience is probably older than dirt, when they get something before the "News for Nerds" does, we are in trouble.

Maybe a smiley would help. ;)

Re:Slashdot Scooped by NPR

[zoombat]

Considering the fact that most of NPR's audience is probably older than dirt, when they get something before the "News for Nerds" does, we are in trouble.

I do understand you're making a joke, but according to the rather interesting stats from this PDF [prss.org], 23% of NPR News listeners are 18-34, and 50% are 35-54.

Not sure what the age demographics of "nerds" would be, but based on IT staffing trends I've observed, NPR's listeners probably aren't really all that much older on average. Actually, I imagine there'

Re:Slashdot Scooped by NPR

[geomon]

..50% are 35-54.

That is my category.

As I said, older than dirt.

Or that should be "Dir-te".

Site down - bad error message!

[philos]

Trying to view the site, I'm getting:

DB Error: connect failed: [nativecode=Too many connections] ** mysql://contagious:l0abck4@localhost/contagious

Is it just me, or is that their MySQL database name, username and password (password modified to protect the innocent)? I've seen too much information from error messages, but this one takes the cake

Re:Site down - bad error message!

[BitterAndDrunk]

certainly looks like it. Could the pw be the hash value, though, making it a little bit "less bad"?

Contagious Marketing

[gururise]

As an experiement, we created an online German Language Resource [homelinux.net] to see what effect (if any) Slashdot has on our number of registered visitors.

I won this two weeks ago...

[adorai]

with the Time Traveler Convention [mit.edu]. I refuse to use the word "meme," but its Slashdotting [slashdot.org] triggered an avalanche of mainstream publicity, culminating in a front-page New York Times article [mit.edu]; Slashdot is more relevant than I once thought. Total hits exceeded 1 million before the Times article came out.

7-11 viral marketing campaign

[bradonM]

It seems that http://www.thebrainfreeze.com/ [thebrainfreeze.com] was produced by 7-11. I called Kevin Gardner and talked to his assistant, they knew about the website but wouldn't confirm or deny that they had their hands in it. Seems mighty suspicious to me! A new twist to viral marketing? Brandon

promoting list spam

[fiftyLou]

Oh, This was a brilliant idea. Contestants are now tolling mailing lists with links to their crappy entries.

Right now I can think of a few contagions I'd like to see the backers of this contest infected with.

Re:Crying while eating?

[shawb]

Yeah, it's wierd. Most virals are. Odd thing is that in this case, since it is at the top of the list, more people will click on it first, and won't get bored and just go away. Being at the top ensures that you are at the top.

Re:Crying while eating?

[Ribbo.com]

Yes I remember there being some quiz question about "On the US governments website, which state has the most views of their fiscal statistics" or similar. Turned out to be Alabama, simply because they were at the top of the list.

Re:So tell me...

[SComps]

are you at least cute?

That might sway some to make an offer.