Sunday, April 9, 2006

In Response
Here's a PM I received:

I don't mean to be rude, but I believe that there is something wrong with the contest: You (heart) theotaku.com.

Firstly, although you have to be at least 13 yrs. of age to be a member, what if a child wants to take a picture of themselves, against their parents' wishes? Many otaku members are in middle school or in high school. Many kids own a digital camera. For a child to simply disobey their parents' wishes to not participate in the contest is simple. As you have stated "14 seconds" is all it takes to simply take a picture. Not only that, but the kids are intrigued with this anime dvd as the prize, that they do not really consider that their identity may be at risk. I'm not stating that theotaku.com is irresponsible in protecting the identity of their users. I am stating that the choice the members make may reflect in joining future contests such as these in other websites, thus increasing their chances of having they're identity brought into the internet world.

Secondly, having kids participate in this contest gives away how they look: their nationality, age, and gender. Why must theotaku.com want a digital photo of this? Is there really no other contest topic that can be safer to protect the identity of the members? You can have the most creative myotaku.com homepage. Another idea is to create theotaku.com banners to post up at the top of the theotaku.com page. These ideas are still related to myotaku.com/theotaku.com and it does not involve the exploitation of the member's identity. One of the strategies in the business world is to figure out what age group, nationality, and gender uses their products or services. I have a feeling that theotaku.com will base most of this information from their contest entries to figure out what kind of people use their site and take this information to target more people with the same features to come to their site. If that is such the case, I do not believe that you should exploit member's identities to further improve your advertising campaign.

Thirdly, it seems a bit odd to choose the winners: one based on creativity and the other randomly. It strikes readers as odd as to why the second winner should be random, which further persuades me to think that there is something that theotaku wants to hide from their members behind this contest. Why shouldn't it be the second most creative? The way you written your contest sounds as though you thought of it last night and just threw all this falty information together in one minute.

It seems very strange to have the second winner as random. It is strange for theotaku.com to want a digital photo of the member. I propose that theotaku.com stop this contest, and hold another contest in its place. I would recommend the banner contest, where the top winners can have their banners at the top of theotaku.com page instead of the other picture you have currently. The winners could have their banners alternate randomly. Some of the guidelines could be to make sure that the website name is on the banner, and it should be creative and anime related. This is just a suggestion.

I hope you reconsider your current contest and either not hold one at all, or switch to another contest.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thanks for your PM, it was long and I'm sure you spent a lot of time on it. However, none of your points are really valid:

1. There are 10,000 places online you can freely upload your photo. Sending us a photo with the disclaimer that we'll post the best is no different than just uploading a photo yourself on flickr or yahoo photos or any social networking site.

We even have our cosplay site, which already hosts 1,000+ photos. When we post pictures we won't even link them to the person's username.

2. The contest is supposed to be fun, that's all. To say that we gain any audience insights through looking at a few photos is laughable. That's what surveys are for (and we've done them before).

3. We want to encourage quality and quantity. If someone doesn't want to spend a long time with it, then they should still have a chance to win. That's why one is based on creativity and another on randomness.
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