My conclusion is still to not have had a vote at all since now I feel that people would never have read the clause about the weight of the vote. In other words, the value (or not) of votes would have to be one of the main statements on the original site, and let’s face it, that’s stupid and wouldn’t fly.

I also think what I’ve always thought: Almost no one actually reads web pages (we scan them) and of that small percentage, NO ONE reads the fine print. Putting EULA, TOS or Fine Print above a paragraph is like a guarantee that the crickets will chirp and people will doze off.

I *do* remember reading multiple tweets from MG stating: remember to make your vote on who you think really will fit into the winery.

These came out often when the #areallygoodejob hashtag would become overflooded with “vote me” tweets and their retweets.

And something Randy said: why not keep Martin in the top 50 just by merrit of what he accomplished… lead me to the thought that you see that MG’s sole purpose in the process was to find the correct person for the job and not to milk Martin for all the “free publicity” he could have brought to the campaign had he made the top 50…

(And now I am cutting the interview short, sorry… I am tired. I will come back, though!)

One more observation: Martin did not send out oodles of “vote me tweets” nor did he plaster his blog with posts on it, he did one post, two or three tweets and then just let it run.

ryan :

Will be catching a plane to the US at this time…headed to the WBC…Will try to listen after, though I still think this is a whole lot of nothing. Yes Murphy Goode doesn’t get it, but it’s their job…and now it’s up to the real winner to have fun!

We’ll miss you live. I have to disagree about it being “nothing” when the red flagged results come up on the first page of a Google search, though. We’ll see how long this lasts.

In the absolute cosmic sense, I’d say… well, let’s see what everyone says in a couple of hours. Have a great trip and a great WBC: http://winebloggersconference.org/

http://www.terredhermes.com/conteurs/html/reglement-fr.html

More on this Tuesday when I’ve had time to study it, since we’re working on a project related to this kind of thing at the moment.

While I’m not very familiar with Kevin or anything he might have done, Leo’s call for votes was certainly significant. I’m not at all familiar with other resources Martin had to garner votes. I think Leo himself might admit that in the context of he and Kevin having their own friendly competition on Twitter for the most “votes” in the past, neither is ignorant of their immense power to influence.

I mentioned Scoble somewhere, here’s a quote from one post in the outcry about theuse of a photo on the videoblogging list:

http://www.mail-archive.com/videoblogging@yahoogroups.com/msg47406.html

‘podtech and other companies that attempt to buy their way in to a “community” that in reality is neither here nor there. contests, awards, content contracts, faux transparency and so on. it’s largely a game where their are some winners, some losers and many observers.’

Pretty on topic in some respects.

Here’s part of the Podtech issue I was trying to find:

http://www.mail-archive.com/videoblogging@yahoogroups.com/msg42738.html

There is no good way that I know to actually read this story unless someone knows of a full post somewhere.