User-Generated Content Voting
Posted by Gabrielle from Denver, CO, US on January 16, 2008
Hi Joel,
Can you give me some examples of user-generated content voting and how many votes on average these promotions generate? Dorito’s Crash the Super Bowl and the Heinz YouTube promotion for example? Where can I find voting results for these types of promos?
Generally these kinds of promotions only make their numbers public knowledge on the sites themselves if they choose to display a count of votes to date or similar. Promotion sponsors and interactive vendors are the only groups privy to this kind of information and are generally quite careful about what they reveal to promotion visitors.
If the numbers are too low, it can be embarrassing, if they seem unrealistically high, then people theorize that the numbers are artificial or maybe hackers/scriptors are fudging the numbers. It is a difficult metric to represent without criticism or accusations.
Some of the better and less controversial ways to represent the numbers might be to show the average submissions daily, or rate the numbers in a relative way (show a upwards pointing triangle if the votes are trending to grow today, versus downward arrow if the average is down today).
So, sorry for the tangent, but the only people you can ask for these numbers would be the promotion providers themselves. In cases where I've been involved on these promotions - it is a percentages game. You may only get 1% of the number of people you reach through media/packaging, and of those people you might only get 20% of those participants to vote or participate in user generated content creation/upload.