A very prominent Dubai establishment is giving away lots of prizes to their fans. The establishment have reached xx,000 Likes on their page in Facebook so they want to give back by giving away prizes daily, weekly and a posh grand prize.
How to enter?
Just post what you like about the establishment and ask your friends to “like” your comment. (The main sponsor Facebook page has to be “Liked” first – gaining them another ‘fan’)
Easy peasy. Comment with most “likes” wins.
FACEBOOK LIKING WAS FIRST A POPULARITY CONTEST
…until unpopular people found other ways to win it.
I’d like to point out that while I am not against the contest, I disagree on how it is done. A contest based on Facebook Likes simply do NOT work in general, it only works for CHEATERS. It only creates dark clouds of doubts on the promotion. It stirs angry discussions among people who play it fair.
It is by far, the most easily abused contest online because anyone who has lots of time in their hands can create a free web based email account and in turn, create a free Facebook account.
A Facebook liking contest is easily maneuvered and won by cunning people by creating multiple fake accounts and ‘liking’ an entry using those fake accounts. If an entry gains more hundreds (or even thousands) of ‘Likes’, there’s no way the contest sponsor can check and determine if all the Facebook accounts are legit or not.
And most sponsoring companies NEVER check.
The cheater always win, again and again in a Liking contest by shuffling his multiple Facebook accounts.
I FELL FOR THE TRAP
Who doesn’t love winning free stuff? I’ve won from radio quizzes because of all out effort and draws, out of sheer luck. I know a Facebook Liking contest is a sham but I fell for it – I joined this recent contest by putting in my entry, which I sincerely mean. I really liked the establishment anyway, it’s one of my favorite places in Dubai.
I posted the shameless plug in my Facebook wall (begging to please ‘Like’ my entry), got my friends to do it for me. Entrants were only given 24 hours to gather votes.
I got nearly a hundred votes from REAL people after a few hours.
However, my hopes died down when I saw there were entries with more than 500 ‘Likes’. Now it’s either,
- The contest entrant is a celebrity
- He/she has thousands of friends (with a fraction of it supporting him/her)
- He/she owns an internet cafe and forcefully asked people at knife point to vote
- He/she had multiple Facebook accounts to generate as much votes in a very short time
Of course I did not win. I don’t feel bad for myself but for my friends who took the time to vote for me so I am writing this as a warning to myself not to fall in the trap anymore.
Friends and relative from near and far away, you can breathe a sigh of relief now. I am not going to beg for Facebook votes anymore.
Dubai is a small city and the social network scene is much smaller. Contest junkies almost know each other. I had been warned but I had confidence in the support of my friends (which I got and very grateful for) but the cheaters are more confident because they don’t need to knock on doors, they’ve got the resources in their own hands to win anything they like. I am sure they feel like Gods.
How low can one get for freebies?
Lastly, there had been complaints from other contest entrants but the company sponsoring the contest is not listening. They are silently giving out the message,
Fight all you want. We don’t care as long as we’ll have another few thousands more ”fans’ on our page, REAL people or NOT.
Finding Backroads 
I can understand you. I also joined Emirates Parents but I think my chance is really small. I hope this companies would really chose the right winner, at least one could understand and accept if someone really wins because they were being fair.
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There really isn’t any way for the sponsor to verify the entries and to verify all the FB accounts for authenticity especially those supporting the entries, and regardless, I don’t think the sponsor really care.
I’ll support friends trying to win in Facebook contests, but so far, I have not been enticed to join myself, especially if winning is based on popularity.
I still like bloggy contests and giveaways, especially if the winner is selected randomly.
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sad 😦
but I just want to let you know that you can still always count on my vote 😉
Stephen
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So sorry about that. The companies that randomly just choose one of their fans do it much better. Or that allow you to simply leave one comment on a post and then they pick one to win. Sure, you could still leave multiple comments by various accounts, but then they aren’t “guaranteed” to win by sheer numbers.
It just sucks when people cheat and I pretty much hate “popularity contests” anyway.
I’m in the Mom Central contest for a grant, but I had to fill out a pretty long application to even get my name on there and it was “approved”. Now there is a voting period of 6 weeks and after that the top 15 vote getters will be judged by the company for merit. That sounds a lot more fair (and well it should be as each grant is worth $2,000).
I’m glad you’ve won other things, but it still sucks to see cheaters.
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I hate when companies are like that. I entered a contest like that with one of my puppies photos and couldn’t believe how some of the entrants were getting tens of thousands of votes and I was legitimately getting around a thousand.
The company didn’t care just like you said.
But just like Money Magnets said, when you need my vote, I’ll always be there for you. 🙂
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Unfortunately, almost all social media forms of giving “votes” is being manipulated by one means or another for the sake of profit and search engine listings.
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You know, I hate to be so cynical, but I couldn’t agree with you more-I don’t really enter contests where you have to vote or like a person or entry because it just doesn’t seem fair to me.
There ARE honest people out there who enter these contests, but you really never know.
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I’m so with you! I’m sick and tired or all these contests where the winner is chosen by the number of FB likes. That’s a full-time job in itself, getting people to vote!
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Wait…. so if you get at least 1000 you give out 4 cards, then with 2000 votes you’ll give out 8? Otherwise there’s not much point in me liking the page is there is already more than 1000 and my chances keep getting slimmer and slimmer by the minute
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Im trying to win a contest for my Senior Class. Odysseus 2012. Please like this and help us win.
Recicl-Arte Cemex:
LIKE > http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=191141214328463&set=a.191087747667143.38404.167212420054676&type=3&theater
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Hey guys, My friend wants to win a scooter for her little boy… All you need to do, kind folks, is click on this link and LIKE the post.
It would make a small person very happy 🙂 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=398939170153239&set=a.398918476821975.83330.276253182421839&type=1&permPage=1
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