I registered and then I got nothing, I have to have an email sent from that thing or what?

I didn't receive any emails either.

This sucks, I tried to do the widget thing for winning tickets or at least something signed by nin through my cousin that lives in the U.S., but I don't even understand this thing.
The only thing I can do is wait for them to pass through Mexico with this last tour because I can't afford the whole trip to a nin concert (they only have $249 VIP tickets)+hotel+flights,etc.. Hope they come to Mexico and hope some of you people that are really interested in nin win!

If the leaderboard is to be believed, I won 2nd and 5th place, but 1st place escaped me.

I'll bet that I'm never contacted to claim my prize(s). I would kind of love to write that follow-up story.

If you're not, fight it all the way. The contest was extremely poorly executed, but that's their problem, and not a reason to deny you any prizes.

And you will give away one prize to anyone as you said in theninhotline.com and in the twitter page of the ninhotline.com?
I would love to have something signed by them and tickets for seeing them live this tour, just saying hahahaha (:

i got 6th place (ruiner19)...damn

Yeah. This thing was pretty much a huge pile of fail. Who could have guessed?

Despite the fact that the contest closed at noon PT yesterday, the leaderboard numbers have changed since. Levi's now in a 2 way tie for 2nd and 1 of 3 tied for the remaining 2 spots.

Anyways, based on the rules breakdown available here the total value of all the prizes is $3864. Using the widget install numbers suggested by the top ten on the leaderboard (229), the cost per widget install was $16.87. I'm not sure just how many more than 229 installs they received, but I'd hardly consider this a successful marketing effort.

Yeah, I don't understand the purpose of the contest if it was for marketing, all the shows are almost sold-out or completely sold-out.

That's because you don't understand marketing. Clearly, if all the shows are sold-out (or nearly so), the campaign was a HUGE success.

yes, I noticed this just a few hours after it closed... except N0J wasn't in the tie then.


I've been keeping a watch on the XML link (found using URLSnooper while viewing the widget).


and result rank="29" through "437" have score="0"

If my math is right, that results in 686 verified installs. However, I'd bet most on the list were already extremely familiar with the tour... most likely finding out about the widget via this board, theninhotline, NIN.com forums, etc. So, this widget is an ultimate fail... but hey, gifts for people at their expense

Wouldn't the total installs be 437? If a user isn't in the score tally, they weren't a verified install.

That yields an average cost of $8.84 per verified install.

nope, how it works...
Person A installs the widget from the original source: their username during registration is added to the list and a score of "0". (That's the list of 437)
Person B installs the widget using the embed code from person A's widget to install: they dont' need to register, thus, aren't added to the list; BUT a score is added to Person A once someone else views Person B's widget. Anyone using the embed code from Person B's widget (and on down the line) will credit a score back to Person A once they are viewed by someone else. (That's the additional total of 249 scores.)

Well, poo. I was kinda hoping for those box sets. And I know I had more installs than that. But I figured it would get fucked up somehow. I HATE YOU LIVENATION!! HATE YOOOOU!!!

So when I was trying to figure out how to make that fucking widget work I decided to contact Live Nation custom support. I received an answer to my question today. I found it very convenient that they finally contacted me the day after the contest ended. I responded to the email from them letting them know that their widget didn't work correctly and that I was not the only person to experience the problem. I also let them know that I had WAY more then 2 people add it from my Facebook page. I told them that I thought their contest was rigged and so on and so on. I am really curious to see how they will respond. Below is the original email that I sent and their response.


Live Nation Support

Please find below information related to your Live Nation ticket inquiry or ticket purchase. To find answers around-the-clock, please visit our online FAQ at www.livenation.com/help

If this issue is not resolved to your satisfaction, please respond to this message.

Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.


Subject
NINJA Widget Contest

Discussion Thread
Response (Carter) 04/14/2009 02:26 PM
Dear Patron,

Thank you for contacting Live Nation Customer Care with your inquiry!

We had our technical team take a look at your complaint and it appears that you were grabbing the widget from your own placement for which would not receive points.

Please reference the contest rules for info about how to earn points for sharing. You can view the contest rules at http://markets.livenation.com/DM/NINJA_RULES.html

We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience.

Please respond to this e-mail if we can be of further assistance regarding this or any other inquiry.

Sincerely,
Carter
Live Nation Customer Care
Customer 04/02/2009 07:51 PM
For some reason I am not receiving any of the points I should be getting. I am not even on the leader board and I know that many people have added the app through the one that I set up. Please explain to me how to use this widget and if I am entered in the contest. Below is my username and email address. Thank you.

Fadeout54321

The sales were like that even before the widget contest.

Your understanding of sarcasm rivals that of your understanding of marketing.

I don't know about others' experiencing faulty credits... it did seem a bit flaky at times.

However, in my attempts to get as many credits as possible to leviaboat's second account, I did a number of different scenarios (some with JessicaSarahS). Most of the time I felt the credits were accurate. If you weren't aware, the logging going on with the widget kept track of IPs... so much so that JessicaSarahS and I couldn't give additional credits to each other or our installed widgets from leviaboat once one of us were logged. What I gleaned from the testing is that the IPs were being strictly tracked. In order to receive scores, not only the IP used to embed the widget needed to be unique, but also the IP used to load/view the embedded widget needed to be unique (and not already logged for the particular PID).

With that said, there are some considerations to take into account that could lead to inflated scores on one side, but also lead others to think they should be getting scores when if fact they won't because they haven't fully comprehended.

Example 1:
dial up and some DSL that doesn't have a quasi-assigned IP address. It would be easy to run up points because the IP of your computer is constantly changing. With the proliferation of true broadband, this probably wasn't factored into the logging scripts. (And how could it be unless they grabbed your MAC?)

Exampe 2:
I have three computers on my home LAN. I install/embed leviaboat's widget from each of these computers to a different blog. Because all three computers are behind the same router and modem, they all have the same public IP = only 1 point instead of 3. (Now think larger scale like college campuses using the same server, etc.)

Final point. This is all laid out in the rules page. A little testing beyond. And if one is really motivated to win and understood how it works, could easily manage quite a high score if they have access to lots of computers on separate networks or force IP changes (but that is against the rules).