Lenzr Evolves Democracy Under Admin Dictatorship
Lenzr is a social media marketing masterpiece that’s tragically flawed, and that’s what makes it so interesting.
The serial photo contest website is basic and clunky, and the rules and voting mechanisms are easily bent by human avarice, but at the end of each session, it works. With very few exceptions, every business that sponsors an imaginative photo contest on Lenzr enjoys an inexpensive boost in their business URL’s search engine findability. The last session received over 4000 visitors, over half of them unique. The average visitor reviews seven pages and spends four minutes on the website.
On July 1st 2010 the May June Lenzr photo contests came to an extraordinarily dramatic conclusion, resulting in scandal. In the Portable Luxury photo contest, the winning picture was removed by admin (because of ‘voting irregularities’) a mere 15 minutes before the contest was scheduled to end.
Debbie Watson felt like she had the rug pulled out from under her feet. But it wasn’t all bad. Mommakoala was recognized as the winner of the 50 Going On 15 photo contest for Tempo Toronto, a baby boomers magazine that chronicles downtown events and sophisticated lifestyles. And she wins over 50 lbs of chocolate for that accomplishment.
The Portable Luxury photo contest will help bring about changes, a catalyst to the website’s social evolution. These events were not entirely unanticipated. Since its birth last year at this time, Lenzr marketing has advertised all over the internet how this serial photo contest platform is run by the people for the people, and how there are no judges, because everyone is a judge. But everyone should also remember there is a moderator - there has to be a police officer or society will breakdown into schemes and worthless connivances.
Lenzr admin made a decision and clipped Mommakoala’s picture because it was the right thing to do, and I’ve explained the decision in a long Lenzr blog post titled, What Happened to Mommakoala’s Candy Stash?
Above is Portable City by Seattle Dredge which was the 2nd place image that’s now recognized as the contest winner. The photo received 330 points and now Seattle plus a guest will be flying to Las Vegas courtesy of Its My Potty, a portable toilet rentals company in Toronto the contest sponsor.
Crowded Places had the most participation with 46 PHOTOS UPLOADED | TOTAL VOTES 1828.
Ve3bnw Bill Watson wins the brand new Blackberry Curve courtesy of Innate Media Group for having submitted the first place photo in the Crowded Places photo contest. Bill Watson’s aerial photo of the Rockton Worlds Fair is quite interesting and was well received, collecting 270.2 points, the most in category. This image also showcases his extraordinary talent for remote controlled devices and aerial photography.
Look at the big picture - Lenzr is trying to achieve something that has never occurred before, a perfectly democratic contest community where business sponsors art. Admin played a heavy hand in this session, but now implements changes for the betterment of the community and the advancement of an new ideal.
A new participation ritual for Lenzr photo contests: wait-n-vote
From this day forward each photo contest page will simply collect images for the first fifty days, and only allow members and visitors to vote during the last ten days of the contest. That way all images will have a fresh start and manipulations can be more easily monitored. Also it will build a natural excitement, like a horse race. During that ten day period (August 20-30) if any images are found to be unjustly promoted the member will be warned of the activity, and then if the action continues the photo will be eliminated from competition.
How Photographers Can Use Online Resource to Boost Their Careers, the article explores not only other photo contests besides Lenzr, but has good information about how to use Facebook and Twitter and run comprehensive searches for new photo contests on Google.
Tags: aerial photography, Bill Watson, Debbie watson, Lenzr, Mommakoala, photo contest, portable toilet rentals, Rockton Worlds Fair, Ve3bnw
Smojoe is a online storyteller and web skirmisher and conversation provocateur that teaches folks how to use articles, blogs and discussion forums to engage humans and satisfy search engine cache bots. You can read more about Story Funnels to Buckstops in every post and esp in the sidebar links where it gets real obvious how I use photos, blogs and bookmarks to make keyword sandwiches for robots.
