[vyrotek]

I'm not really surprised. Salesforce held contest a few years ago for some of their Apps and based it completely on Facebook Likes of YouTube video presentations.

Some teams were definitely felt favored. Some were let in well past the entry due-date (giving them more time to submit better presentations). Other products were bogus and nothing more than photoshop mocks. And some companies cheated and purchased thousands of likes over night (they were caught and disqualified).

It was a serious mess. The funniest part was seeing how the companies all had thousands of likes while the actual views of the videos were barely in the hundreds.

[drakaal]

I'd like this one. I sell Facebook likes. If you were offering a $1M prize I'd "sell" you a lot of Facebook likes. It would be like if all of England liked me. Which they probably do even if they don't want to admit to it.

I also sell Youtube views, so I could make sure it would be less funny than what you describe.

Popularity contests should be done in person. Harder to cheat if you have to get people to the venue.