Life, the Universe and the Internet

Here is my second site review through the Review Me program. For anyone who is not familiar with Review Me, it is a third party service that puts bloggers and site owners in touch and for a fee the blog owner can provide a review of the website in question. If you are interested in me reviewing your website, follow this link. The current cost for a review is $30.

My second review is for a site called WhoGets.com. Who Gets, is an online sweepstake site with a slight twist on the usual format. As with many sweepstake sites, there are multiple competitions running and anyone can enter the competitions for free. The difference with Who Gets, is that the winner is ultimately chosen by all the members of the site. All the entrants get to plead their case of why they should win and the one with the most votes at the end will get the prize. Before going further I should probably point out that competitions are only valid for US residents and even a few US states are excluded.

At the time of writing Who Gets had competitions running for Ipod Shuffles, clothing, DVD’s and some prepaid phone cards. So this should give you a good idea of the general prize values.

The Website

In terms of the site itself I found it to be reasonably well design, plenty of white space and easy to read pages. I did not really like the side navigation menu with it’s drop down options, but apart from that the site is pretty easy to get around. Each competition has it’s own dedicated page and the page contains some social bookmarking tools. There is also a comments function for members to post comments on each competiton. Registration is also free and easy to do.

Who Gets Home Page

The Concept

I have to say that I find the whole concept of this site extremely flawed, but I wonder if this is me being overly cynical. After looking around a few competitions, it became obvious that the person who would win would be the one who pleaded the saddest case. Now while this is an obvious thing, how do you know that these pleadings are genuine, with a website this is impossible. Also you read the comments on any competition and they are just full of “Please vote for me” messages.

I really cannot see the point of this concept, surely the model of a random contest winner is far more fair and fun than this pleading. I could understand if this was used in the case of a tie break, but to have it as your whole competition model just seems ridiculous to me.

Who Gets Competition Page

Overall

In terms of website design, there is little to fault with Who Gets, however as a concept I personally think it leaves a lot to be desired. By all means have a sweepstake website, but making everyone beg to win, I don’t think so.