Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2008 > March > 20 > Entry
Vague Web 2.0 contest promises ‘five-star restaurant’ dinner for 12
Will you work for food?
A Web site is promising that one lucky Austinite will win dinner for 12 (do you even HAVE 11 friends?) at a five-star restaurant as part of a contest that began today and runs through mid-April.
The catch? You’re gonna have to work for your supper.
Whrrl.com collects information about bars, restaurants, clubs and concerts, via text message and the Web on a map. The company is hoping users like you will fill in the gaps of their knowledge by submitting your own reviews, “not currently listed in their comprehensive database.”
Each entry added is a contest entry for the “five-star restaurant,” which has not been named. Five-star according to whom?
Maybe I’m just a cynical so-and-so, but this sounds like they’re making the public do the work for them with a vague promise of dinner at an unnamed establishment. There’s “user-generated content” and then there’s laziness. This one sounds a little lazy to me.
But who knows? Maybe one of you reading will be living it up at Fonda San Miguel or Vespaio, and I’ll feel like an idiot.
Can you save me a doggie bag, at least?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Food, Internet
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By chip
March 24, 2008 7:03 PM | Link to this
Forget the mystery of the five-star restaurant: how about the mystery of the value of this service? I'm supposed to go through a sign-in process and register on the basis of a (content free) front page and an FAQ? Sorry, won't happen.
If you do register, be careful. According to their privacy policy if you do, you are giving them the right to spam you. That's crummy but not unusual for free services. Here is the unusual part: the privacy policy says that if you want to use their SMS features you cannot opt out from the spam.
By Julie Gomoll
March 24, 2008 6:52 PM | Link to this
Like "design contests" and "logo contests", it's a poorly disguised request for work on spec. Not cool.