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View Full Version : Help Me Win $1250 for Kids Who Need It This Christmas


Jason Dunn
12-03-2010, 11:00 PM
<p>Hi everyone!&nbsp;<strong>I need your help</strong>&nbsp;to win an&nbsp;<a href="http://apps.facebook.com/unboxingday/about.php" target="_blank">unboxing&nbsp;contest that Best Buy is running on Facebook</a>, and it&rsquo;s for a good cause.&nbsp;Since I&nbsp;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/thoughtsmedia" target="_blank">do a lot of those</a>, I thought hey, why not enter? There are two grand prizes of $2500 CAD each, awarded as Best Buy gift cards. Since we&rsquo;re coming up on Christmas, sharing the grand prize if I win makes sense &ndash; so I&rsquo;ve publicly committed&nbsp;to&nbsp;<strong>donating half of the prize ($1250)</strong>&nbsp;to kids involved with&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bbbscalgary.com/bins/index.asp" target="_blank">Big Brothers &amp; Big Sisters of Canada</a>. My mother works for that organization, and I&rsquo;ve seen first hand the needs that some of these families have. She works with the in-school mentoring program, which pairs younger kids with senior citizen mentors. Apparently the kids are Nintendo Wii-crazy, and it&rsquo;s an activity the seniors and kids can do together, so I think what I&rsquo;ll do is buy as many Nintendo Wii bundles as I can with $1250 (it should be at least five of them).</p><p><strong>I'd really appreciate the support of the Thoughts Media community</strong>, because - and I'll be blunt here - Twitter is such a noisy medium that every though yesterday the message about this contest went out to over 5000 people from three different people, nearly zero votes came as a result of it. I'm currently #3 in votes, but I could easily take a dominating lead if even 20% of you reading this decided to act. Please help!</p><p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2861" height="435" src="http://www.jasondunn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/best-buy-unboxing-video.jpg" title="best-buy-unboxing-video" width="502" /></p><p><strong>Here&rsquo;s how you can help me, and the kids, win &ndash; oh, and enter to win a $150 gift card yourself!</strong></p><ol><li>Log into Facebook, and visit the&nbsp;<a href="http://apps.facebook.com/unboxingday/" target="_blank">Best Buy Unboxing Day Contest Site</a>. Click&nbsp;<strong>Allow&nbsp;</strong>when the app asks for your permission. I&rsquo;ve noticed there&rsquo;s a weird bug with Internet Explorer 8 where it loops the process for almost a minute, so you may want to use Firefox or Chrome if you run into trouble.</li><li>Find my&nbsp;<strong>Samsung Focus</strong>&nbsp;video (see above) and click on it, then click on Vote in the window that pops up. You&rsquo;ll need to fill out a little form; if you live outside Canada and don't qualify for the gift card, just put in whatever bogus information you want.</li><li><strong>Return to that contest site every day to vote</strong>&nbsp;&ndash; you can vote once every day up until December 31st.</li></ol><p>The winners will be announced January 3rd, 2011, and if I win, I&rsquo;ll announce it here and provide details and photos of the Wii&rsquo;s I purchase.</p><p>(And for the Windows Phone Thoughts readers, I'll be doing a "real" unboxing of the Focus - that was just a simplified, quick version. I've got some serious concerns about the screen...).</p>

jazboy01
12-06-2010, 06:23 PM
Novel work Jason. Although i don't have facebook account but will create one and will vote for you. Will forward this article to friends also..

Jason Dunn
12-06-2010, 06:27 PM
Novel work Jason. Although i don't have facebook account but will create one and will vote for you. Will forward this article to friends also..

Thank you, I really appreciate that! :)

The Yaz
12-07-2010, 04:37 PM
I promise to vote everyday...

There's no way I'm gonna let youo lose to a dog in a box :D

Steve :cool:

Jason Dunn
12-07-2010, 08:58 PM
I promise to vote everyday...There's no way I'm gonna let youo lose to a dog in a box :D

Thank you! If only a tiny % of people reading Thoughts Media sites felt the same I'd crush it. Sadly, it seems you're in the minority - because cat in the box is now #2. <sigh>

karen
12-08-2010, 03:27 PM
Surprised about Twitter. I'm going to Tweet it...but know that you get the best response to a Tweet in the 4pm ET timezone period. Perhaps it was timing.

I follow you and a few people from here and I didn't see anything. That's the nature of Twitter, though: no persistence in reality.

I do have a bit of a following and some influence -- let's see if it helps.

karen
12-08-2010, 03:37 PM
Ugh...just went and did the voting process. Best Buy gets data, but they don't get social media. Having to provide that level of personal information just to vote is not a usual thing. I'm betting that thousands of people have arrived to vote and bailed on the whole thing.

First, having to grant FB access, then provide e-mail and phone? That's probably why Twitter folks didn't vote.

But I did it anyway so that I could vote.

Jason Dunn
12-09-2010, 01:57 AM
Surprised about Twitter. I'm going to Tweet it...but know that you get the best response to a Tweet in the 4pm ET timezone period. Perhaps it was timing.

Interesting - I had no idea that was the best time to Tweet. :-)

I follow you and a few people from here and I didn't see anything. That's the nature of Twitter, though: no persistence in reality.

Depends how you use Twitter I guess. I think there are two main methods:

1) Twitter is a river: you step in and follow the stream flowing past you, then you close your Twitter app, the tweets keep flowing, and when you open it up again you pick up from that moment moving forward.

2) Twitter is a glass of water: you drink each and every tweet, savouring them all.

I know lots of people that are #1; I'm personally #2. I only follow a small number of people, but I read every single thing they tweet. And I unfollow them if their signal to noise ratio (from my perspective of course) starts to get out of control.

I do have a bit of a following and some influence -- let's see if it helps.

THANK YOU! :)

Lee Yuan Sheng
12-09-2010, 03:05 AM
I know lots of people that are #1; I'm personally #2. I only follow a small number of people, but I read every single thing they tweet. And I unfollow them if their signal to noise ratio (from my perspective of course) starts to get out of control.


Totally off-topic, but that is me as well. Had to drop quite a few people because their tweets were just verbal diarrhoea. I think many people just use Twitter very casually; they see a few things at a time, and good luck if you miss their "window".

Jason Dunn
12-09-2010, 03:08 AM
Totally off-topic, but that is me as well. Had to drop quite a few people because their tweets were just verbal diarrhoea. I think many people just use Twitter very casually; they see a few things at a time, and good luck if you miss their "window".

Indeed...the thing I find funny is that I'll often follow someone, then after a few days/weeks, I might unfollow them because they're posting what they've having for lunch, or "Just got home!"/"Leaving for work", etc. I can't tell them how they should be using Twitter, but I can unfollow if I don't want to see that kind of thing in my feed. What's amusing is when they try to direct message me and realize I'm not following them - then we have the awkward phase of "So, um, why did you unfollow me?" and me trying to explain how I like to use Twitter and blah blah blah. It's all pretty ridiculous. :(