Comments on: Letter to Moonfruit about their #moonfruit contest and Twitter’s search problem

By: Lance Brown

Lance Brown — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:40:07 +0000

Also Andrew, I don’t really see why I’m a sucker. I posted this in order to get an answer from Moonfruit, because they had blown me off on other channels. I got the answer I was looking for, which is that Moonfruit was indeed aware of the problem, and wasn’t telling anyone because they apparently have shaky ethics. I was able to then check their site and see that they were continuing to not tell potential participants about it, which wrapped up my inquiry into the matter. So this post accomplished all it set out to, IMO, given that Moonfruit is comfortable misrepresenting the truth to people for marketing purposes. The time frame of the contest, which got shortened even more by Moonfruit’s abrupt decision to end it early once Twitter delisted them from Trending Topics, made it so that taking any substantial action to make them change their ways was unlikely to work. So again, this post did exactly as much as it could have. I’m pretty content with it.

By: Lance Brown

Lance Brown — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:26:52 +0000

Andrew,

Joe White from Moonfruit openly admitted that they knew before the contest started that not all tweets would be included in their survey of tweet entries.

Even if that wasn’t the case–and it is–even when they were made aware of it through outside forces, they still didn’t disclose that fact on their contest page, or their Twitter feed. They continued to claim that all you had to do was tweet #moonfruit and your tweet would be counted as an entry, even though they knew that was not true for some percentage of users.

If you feel more comfortable with them after knowing that, then I’m not too worried about your opinion of me or them.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:30:53 +0000

Lance you are a sucker because after reading this entire post I feel more comfortable about moonfruit.

You really had no legitimate reason to gripe. Moonfruit just used Twitter, you are claiming they knew about the issue. Ridiculous claim considering they are not affiliated with Twitter and just used it to market.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:36:58 +0000

While I appreciate you wanting to bring things to light, I think it’s understood by reading their contest rules that they can’t be held responsible for things out of their control like Twitter’s search not capturing all tweets. Thus, the onus is on the user (or contest entrant) to ensure that their tweets are captured in the twitter search. I just checked, and mine are.

As for grounds for a lawsuit, I’m not really sure what you could sue for. I mean, you’re choosing to enter a contest on your own. Nobody made you do it. They’re claiming they’re giving away MacBook Pros and indeed that is the prize–not a gift certificate to the Apple Store or something that _could_ be a MacBook Pro.

I can’t say I’ve had fun with this contest, but I know others have. All I can say is that it’s just another contest to me, and it’s not like they’re intentionally defrauding people. I think that the bottom line is that Twitter search is not perfect, and Moonfruit addresses this in item 9 of its rules. So at the end of the day, if there are technical reasons why one tweet is not recorded as an entry, then it’s not their fault because there’s no way they can fix a problem that is Twitter’s and Twitter’s alone.

At least they’re giving you a chance to win a MBP. Whether Twitter search will let you have a chance or not is another story, and the fault lies with Twitter.

By: Lonny Eachus

Lonny Eachus — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:26:52 +0000

Actually, the way Moonfruit has gone about it, if this “sweepstakes” were being run in any medium other than the Internet, it would be illegal as hell in my state. In fact it is not clear to me that it is actually legal as it is.

Certainly, changing the rules in the middle of the game is illegal in my state. Being in the UK, I am not sure they can be prosecuted (or should be), but again: if they were doing this in any form other than the internet, they would be open to prosecution and lawsuits.

By: @cindygordon

@cindygordon — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:10:33 +0000

Here’s my creative entry! Rock on #moonfruit, awesome advertising!!! :)

A love letter to my sweet little #moonfruit: http://bit.ly/hkwOU

By: hudmond

hudmond — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:08:11 +0000

I’ll admit I’m a little upset too I spent several hours doing my creative submission and it never even got posted via @moontweet
I messaged several times @moontweet and got no responses, starting to think maybe my twitter doesn’t work at all (I’ve never received a message towards me?) I don’t blame moonfruit though, just twitter really. I feel like I wasted a lot of time typing #moonfruit though I’ve noticed none of my posts show up in the hash searches either :(

Anyhow here’s my creative submission in case 1 person wants to actually see it

By: Lance Brown

Lance Brown — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:57:14 +0000

Just to be clear here: Moonfruit could have held this contest in a fair way, simply by acknowledging up-front what they knew to be true: that not all tweets would in fact be included in the entrant pool.

They could have instructed people on how to see if they were being indexed, and advise how to enter as appropriate. (In the U.S., sweepstakes are required to accept all entries that are submitted in a certain way, regardless of their particular gimmick for entering.)

Such a transparent move would have avoided any controversy, and would have ensured that no one was being falsely duped into promoting a brand with no hope of being entered. But Moonfruit faced that decision and chose to claim that tweeting #moonfruit would equal entry into the contest, knowing for sure that an unknown percentage of entries would never get “entered”.

These are issues of fairness and business ethics, plain and simple. You don’t get to involve millions of folks in your marketing campaign based on unethical grounds. Making sure stuff like that doesn’t happen is one of the purposes of the twitterverse, as I see it.

By: Lance Brown

Lance Brown — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:37:59 +0000

P.S. Dave – I’ll be sending a crew by to cover your house in a giant ad for me, which I’m not going to pay you anything for. It will be fun!

By: Lance Brown

Lance Brown — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:32:14 +0000

Thanks for your thoughtful comment Dave. FWIW, I could give a crap about winning a MacBook. And bringing things to light when folks in power aren’t being fully honest or transparent is something I’m not even close to wanting to apologize for.

Getting Twitter to fix their search index is a separate issue, which I am also working on. And if you had read the support thread for it, you would know that hordes of people have been complaining to them for a month with no response. I did email them, long before any of this you see here, and before your suggestion to do so. Thanks for trying to help me out though.