Ecompliments.com held a video contest where entrants were supposed to like, compliment somebody…I think. The actual rules or even the point of the whole thing don’t really matter. What matters is that the winner of the 10 Grand was decided by a public vote.

Letting “the public” pick the winner of a video contest is bad enough. But the organizers took things a step further and allowed the public to start voting before the end of the submission deadline. That means that the first people to upload videos had a huge advantage. Here’s the video that went on to win the top spot:

First Place. Prize: $10,000

That video wound up receiving 3,195 votes but the second place video (who won nothing) had only 1585 votes. This begs the question, how did such a blowout occur?

Turns out the dude who won the 10K has a huge youtube following. He does a web show called The DeFranco Update and he has himself 104,273 subscribers to his youtube channel! He added a link to his video so that if any of his fans wanted to vote for him all they had to do was click, register and vote. So did any of those 3,195 voters watch any of the other videos before they decided that the Defraco Report guy’s entry was the best? Of course not. They just voted for the guy they already liked and then moved on.

And I don’t blame Defranco Report guy for this one bit. Yes he had an advantage over the other contestants because he already had a fan base but you can’t hold it against the guy for making the most of the opportunity when it came along. I’ve had some videos go viral before and though it’s fun to see your view count rise, you can’t help but wish there was some way to make real money off of all those clicks. So the winner of the contest just found a unique way to make money off his internet celebrity.

The organizers of the contest seem to realize that they basically messed up and held a $10,000 popularity contest. The Ecompliments contest website says…..

“We will be running a new contest with new rules in January. A panel will determine the winner based on a combination of factors. Although votes will be a primary factor it will not be the only one. The video requirements will be more tightly focused on “compliments” and “sharing the good.” There will be a grand prize and prizes for second and third place.”

Sounds like they probably got whole lot of complaints about how the winner was picked. But good for them for doing a whole new contest. Hey, maybe I can shoot an entry for the new contest where I compliment the organizers for doing a new and improved contest!