With the election season heating up, Friendster is sponsoring a contest that will award prizes including $2,500 in cash for the best political video ads submitted to a newly created user-generated
content site.
Through the contest, Friendster aims to generate traffic to the video section it launched earlier this year. Although the competition quietly launched at the
beginning of the month, it has so far drawn less than 100 videos, according to Jeff Roberto, PR marketing manager for Friendster.
Roberto said he will consider the contest a success if Friendster
ends up getting about 1,000 videos by November. The social networking site claims to have 31 million members.
To compete in the "Get Political" video contest running through Nov. 6, Friendster
members can enter videos espousing a political point of view, supporting a candidate, or sending a satirical message. Video submissions are filtered by Friendster to screen out explicit or irrelevant
material.
"Our goal is to get the American citizen to step up and voice their opinion," explained Roberto. While some of the videos entered so far have dealt with issues such as the Iraq war and
global warming, many have been in a satirical vein. "A lot of it is comedy," he said. That includes one titled "Bill Blackburn for World Leader" and a mock interview with California Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
The contest is being hosted on the Sharkle video-sharing platform developed by ViTrue Inc. and can be accessed either through Friendster's video section or at Sharkle.com.
Friendster's video section, which launched several months ago, features content from various video sites including YouTube, Grouper and Singing Fool.
For the contest, the top six videos as
determined by a combination of user ratings and total viewings, will be awarded a $2,500 grand prize, a $1,000 Sony video camera for second place, and four $300 video iPods for third-place
submissions.