

Show HN: O'Reilly using our new contest software to giveaway full JS bookshelf - nate
http://www.facebook.com/OReilly?sk=app_148918675171161

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petercooper
I can't complain about this not working, because it clearly does. And I can't
complain about the technology being used to do it, because it looks great.

The types of companies trying these sorts of things nowadays surprises me
though. It's like the sweepstakes that were everywhere online in the late 90s.
This time, essentially they're cashing in on lots of other people's social
capital (with a game or two thrown in) with the negligible cost of a few
prizes to the most ardent promoters. Nothing wrong with that if people know
what they're going in for, but it seems rather inelegant for the likes of
O'Reilly.

Nonetheless, if it works, hats off to everyone and perhaps I'll be forced to
give it a go one day! The standards are clearly changing when it comes to
encouraging retweets and Facebook likes of your business.. :-)

~~~
nate
Thanks for the feedback and I know a bit where you are coming from. It's
something that is on our minds constantly with this. When we looked at
contests on Facebook and Twitter now, almost all of them force one thing: the
use of social capital to buy entry. Most sweepstakes on facebook put up the
"Fangate" where you are forced to like the page before you can even see what
the sweepstakes or contest is even about.

I'm not in love with Fangates. I'm also not saying we won't experiment with
them though. But I think I know what you are saying and feel a lot of the same
stuff.

But that's why we thought we were making this a lot more interesting. We've
had Cityposh contests being played and won from people who don't even have
Facebook or Twitter accounts. They just like playing the games. We have 6
other games right now and will continue create more that have nothing to do
with "social capital".

So we try and offer all this stuff up as a menu. You pick and choose what you
like. If you are having fun with the games feel free to bring in your friends
on Facebook to help you win. If you don't think it's worth it, there's 6 other
or so ways to just play and get points.

It's a great point though Peter, and one we aren't forgetting about as we
iterate on this.

~~~
petercooper
Good points. Having extra options through the games is a great addition here
that I don't recall seeing before (but I'm not exactly researching this topic
;-)). The problem is, grabbing a quick 1000 points for doing a "like" is
pretty tempting.

I know I'm in the minority here, though. These sorts of things clearly work,
but I'm the guy who'd rather put down $10 for something than send a tweet to
get it for free (or pull out one of my "spare" accounts I don't care about, of
course ;-)).

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ZoFreX
Going to that page in my browser (Chrome 14) gives me a warning about an
insecure script that has been disabled - the learn more link points here:
[https://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=1...](https://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=1342714)

~~~
nate
Ah, thanks for letting us know. Will work on better ssl support.

~~~
ZoFreX
Fun tip: If you do something like src="//website.com/resource.js", then
browsers will use SSL if the source page was sent over SSL, and won't if it
wasn't.

------
nate
If you don't have or want to use your Facebook account, here's the bigger
version

[http://cityposh.com/contests/play-to-win-free-oreilly-
ebooks...](http://cityposh.com/contests/play-to-win-free-oreilly-ebooks-and-
videos)

------
badhairday
Note to college students and other professionals, you might have access to all
of these ebooks via Safari Books Online. Stop playing the game and get back to
coding in JS.

------
alttag
Typing words into the "sloggle" challenge, oftimes the textbox won't clear
after hitting enter (but are accepted after a short delay), so the first few
letters of the next word are removed along with the previous word.

~~~
nate
Bah, that's annoying! :) Thanks for the report. We'll look into getting that
fixed soon.

------
Tiomaidh
It's too bad they don't also give away the dead-tree version. Some things are
nice to actually have on your shelf...

~~~
nate
I'll let them know about that. Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
Tiomaidh
Thanks.

Also: I take it that you have to be in the top 10 to get something? Or is it
that the top 3 get something, and 10 others are randomly selected to win a
book? The award system is not explained too clearly...

~~~
nate
Ah, I'll mention this could be cleared up. It's the top 3 people get the 1/2/3
prizes mentioned. The raffle is run amongst everyone who plays at all. So even
if you just tweet or like the thing, or take the minimal amount of time to
enter, you are elegible for the raffle. So you don't have to be anywhere near
the top 10 to win a javascript ebook.

~~~
Tiomaidh
...and I was feeling reasonably good about reaching #18 efficiently. But don't
really have the time to burn to claw my way up another 15 places. I was hoping
that the raffle would be weighted by the number of points you have...oh well.
Time to just hope I'm lucky.

By the way--thanks for babysitting this thread and responding to everyone.

~~~
nate
Ah, yes, weighted raffles. We'd love to have weighted raffles. We were fooling
with that awhile ago, but there's a sticky legal point. The whole no purchase
necessary clause. If we had weighted raffles it sounds like we'd need a way
for people to send us a postcard and have equal treatment as the highest
person on the leader board with the raffle. That didn't sound fair. We'd love
to figure out a way to do it though.

~~~
cabalamat
> The whole no purchase necessary clause.

But none of the games/tasks cost anything anyway... so no purchase is
necessary. (What am I missing?)

