Votigo - Contests For Contests Niche
by
on April 22, 2007,
Votigo is a new contest site that lets people be the judge of, well the judge of anything really. Votigo simply lets anyone from business to Aunt Bernice start their own video or photo contest. Users can create a contest from anything they are either involved or interested in and there are some pricey prizes to win too.
I tagged the site as a simple diversion, which it is, but the partners of the site are quite impressive and include: Prom Queen, Santa Cruz Snowboards, Modest Mouse and others. The company was founded by a former Yahoo! employee Mike la Rotonda and Jim Risner in 2006.
Votigo is a fairly complete platform for this type of community and allows for the creation, voting, commentary and fun across a wide range of contest possibilities. The site lists 1836 people in the people section and actually has some stunning photographs and video amongst the 304 contests listed. As you might expect the range of contests is wide and often funny from bimbos to babies, and many of them left me laughing at the never ending creativity of some people on the Web.
The only problem I found with the site is that some people there are obviously either blind or mad. The contest for the Hottest Maxim Cover Girl was either fixed (just kidding it is impossible) or the result of the aforementioned maladies. Eva Mendez won over a baker's dozen of barbeque hot entrants from Gina Gershon (who you could cook an egg on with no oil) to my favorite of the presented photos Vanessa Minnillo (for which no description should be necessary).
The current big prize is a $5000 award for the best 27 second stock pitch. The winner will also be featured on Motley Fool CAPS. Other prizes include $250 for the most outrageous dress and a Sony camcorder and a snowboard for the best snowboarding video.
Votigo is not the most strikingly designed site and the community aspect is not overly Web 2.0ish, but it is a great diversion and fun to interact with. Every Web 2.0 site out there does not have to be the “end all” to be successful and Votigo fills a niche very nicely. Some upcoming sites like GoChongo may give Votigo a run for its money, but for now this site is the most diverse and interesting by far.
