ScratchYourself: Viral Sweepstakes That Brands Could Love
Michael Arrington
30 comments »
A new service called ScratchYourself came to our attention today. It’s a fairly simple Flash application that lets users upload an image and build a lottery-style scratch card from it. During the beta period people have a chance to win some very limited cash prizes that total $90 or so per day across all winners.
Once a scratch card has been created, users can email it to friends or embed it on their site. I created a quick scratch card with our logo and have embedded it below.
What interests me more than the front end, which would easily be duplicated, is the business model and payments infrastructure they’ve put in place. Users have an incentive to create and embed these on their blogs, MySpace page, etc.: if you create a scratchcard and someone wins a prize, you get the same prize as the creator of the card. Prizes are awarded, at the winner’s choice, via paypal, mailed check or amazon gift certificate.
The company’s business model is to attract advertisers to sponsor prizes (cash, products, coupons). If ScratchYourself turns out to be trustworthy and can circumnavigate the rather complicated federal and state regulations governing sweepstakes, brands could be attracted to this. You get a good long look at the image underneath the scratch area, which is more than can be said for most banner advertising. And publishers will like the ability to win the same prizes as their readers.
Shycast and Bix (acquired by Yahoo) are also experimenting with brand based contests, albeit through video (and Shycast is also a social network).
Note: If you make a goatse scratchcard, please do not share it with me (yes, I thought about all kinds of things that you people will want to try out).
Very nice idea indeed… let´s see if this gets into the long tale!
wow, that’s a cool idea. Totally love it. like sergio said, let’s see how it proceed….
Very interesting idea. Too bad laws and regulations make ideas like these hard.
Interesting but limited, a more extensive alternative is a new start-up this year from ePrize - http://www.caffeinenow.com. They have built out instant win, sweepstakes and coupon promotions functionality.
Good idea (I got a ”chance in drawing” thing) but the problem with putting this on your MySpace, etc is that most will just assume it’s another one of those ‘Click to win a free iPhone!!!’ flash ads or some variant.
I’m using the latest version of Firefox and it wouldn’t scratch…
How cool is that, I like the fact that you don’t leave the site you are on to enter the contest. A great way to encourage daily visitors. But if you do one on one site, can you do one on another site as well?
what a cool idea… but maybe the actual scratching can be more fun than just seeing the logo of the company… some surprise element, something to make me laugh… anything than just expecting to see the logo of the brand…
Everybody is in love with this
- I am not -
-#1 although most are willing to give up their email address (especially on stupid myspace) I am not
- #2 its flash, therefore - weaksauce
- #3 Its an old model,
Votigo is another site in this space that allows anyone to easily create their own customized photo or video contest. They’ve worked with partners like Epic Records and The Motley Fool to run online contests but the service also allows anyone to create a contest just for fun. They have some new viral contest features in the works that’s similar to ScratchYourself. In the interest of full disclosure I’m the Co-founder and CEO of Votigo.
Like #6 Dean, I’m using the latest version of Firefox and the cards don’t scratch properly. Now unlike some of you on here I’m not in the top 0.0001% of most technically savvy people, but I am in the top 1%. People in the top 1% don’t care/respond to advertising anyway and the bottom 50% who might, won’t be able to scratch these things off. Great idea!
It’s a “neat idea” but it’s not a business. Then again, the latter rarely get featured on TechCrunch.
OR!, take this live on college campuses where Russian mobsters and French hackers can’t *game* the system
palletJack, why is flash “weaksauce”? I know some people hate it, but think it’s nearing time to get over the aversion. Flash, used correctly, is a powerful (and great looking tool). Sites should use the right tool for each component. If it can be done well with HTML/Javascript, go for it. If it would work out better with Flash, then why waste time recreating something with Javascript that you could build 3 times faster with Flash? Flash is getting better at handling text than it used to, while DHTML is making smoother and fancier animations than it used to. So pros and cons to each, but Flash is not as annoying as it used to be.
Arghh! Another guy who flash! Flash is absolutely elegant and ITS not heavy.
Flash in the hands of a proper programmer can do magic. And it’ll load faster than any other script which can do something similar.
As Amy says, it takes much less time to create things with flash than JS. Why take the pain and spend time on re-inventing things. Flash is getting way better than it used to be. It no longer is the slow turtle.
I mean hates flash in the first line
There are at least 2 different scripts like this that I know for $50 each; anyone can easily setup a website like this one.
Firefox works fine here, but since there are so many add-ons, it doesn’t really provide much trouble-shooting info to say just that; maybe disabling ‘no script’ will help.
Jay, I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering why you can’t envision the revenue potential this service possesses. I don’t think you even care to consider and would rather nay-say. That’s cool, and I do agree with the “1%” characterization. But, you pulled the, “50% who might, won’t be able to scratch these things off.” assertion out of your @ss.
The real question is competition and execution. From some of the comments, it sounds like there are several competitive offerings. I still don’t understand why a “scratch card” format is necessary, or the specific mechanism for revenue generation, but I can imagine a number of scenarios.
Wait and see, I guess.
Hmm, wouldnt this need a captcha? The prizes are currently pretty low to warrant any interest, but what prevents someone from creating a scratchbot (trademark opportunity anyone? ;))
@ 17 - I pulled it out of my ass. TechCrunch pulled out “That Brands Could Love” out if its collective ass too.
People who fall for dumb sweepstakes are aplenty but they tend not to have the latest browsers and the companies that they get tricked by tend not to be featured on TechCrunch.
This is an idea that should have mass appeal and its a alternative to sending friends an online postcard.
inspite of the viral concept that this program gets spread through - it still looks like spam marketing that will annoy people.
This is an interesting information and while I know that many people don’t like flash - it creates interactive sites and for my site that concentrates on web 2.0 interactivity is very important. Thank you for the info
I win 50$ - Michael Arrington should receive 50 dollars too. But am Russian - to me will not send money?
Strange: http://www.GoodLuckFinder.com - I create this site and it has brought to me success. It not a spam it is really strange.
Michael will receive from a ScratchYourself acknowledgement of a prize.
cool idea, but i never win with scratch off
It’s fun when I first looked at it.
However, I sent myself a scratch card by mail.
This reminds me of the spammy greeting cards that get over abused.
I won’t ever open greeting cards.
This will be abused by emailers and distrusted by spam haters for sure.
Their privacy policy blows.
– begin excerpt –
We may, in Our sole discretion, sell, license, or allow access to certain personally identifiable information We collect from You when using this site and/or entering the Sweepstakes to one or more third parties who may then use it for their own purposes.
– end excerpt –
Monty is correct, everything old is new again, on the web. This is very similar to the greeting card spam of the late 90s with the sligtly new twist of a prize thrown in.
eBusiness
Since you win if someone else wins on one of your cards, you can improve your chances by posting your ScratchYourself card at SiteRaffle.com.
Yea great idea,
By the way when are we going to see Gravatars on TechCrunch?