11 ms·
Twitter Contest Winning as a Service
- userbinator 11y agoI ended up not claiming the majority of the things I won because I wasn’t able to use them or attend them. It sounds like the bot could be made (slightly?) more intelligent, to avoid entering contests that you're certainly not eligible to. so I had to spend a decent amount of time going though my DMs to find legit winner notifications. Making the bot read DMs to find them seems an easier task than determining eligibility. Reading through the winnings list gives an interesting idea of the scale of how many ticketable events happen globally... he only won a tiny fraction of the contests but there's already more tickets than any single person could ever make use of.
- mcv 11y agoIt'd have to be a lot more intelligent, and then some. It's quite a leap to go from matching "RT" and "win" to checking what kind of thing the prize is, whether it needs to be mailed or claimed, and what the location is where that needs to happen.
- wangarific 11y agoIt would need to be a lot more intelligent to be perfect, but there are probably a few keywords you can use to filter out the bulk of prizes you don't want.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoI'm not sure how the filter would work to catch something like: -tickets to Carrot Top at Golden Nugget Casino in Atlantic City So I'm pretty sure there's going to always be a modicum of human involvement in the claiming part. It could auto reply with some PO box address maybe. He did note sometimes he didn't receive the item (ex: 'tupaware').
- jasonlotito 11y agoJudging by the word cloud [1], you could simply ignore all posts with "ticket" in the tweet and that would help for the majority of cases. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10003570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10003570
- almightysmudge 11y agoIt would ruin the point of the bot a bit if it was only entering local, claimable competitions wouldn't it? Hugely localising the data it's gathering.
- a3voices 11y agoIt sounds like the bot could be made (slightly?) more intelligent, to avoid entering contests that you're certainly not eligible to. Why? It's better to win everything possible to prevent other people from winning them.
- ryanistheryan 11y agoPreventing other people from winning contests doesn't make the bot "better"
- a3voices 11y agoWell I guess we have philosophical differences, but if I could hypothetically prevent every person in the world from winning every contest, it would be very funny and exciting to me.
- Pxtl 11y agoI've often found that nation-specific metadata is often difficult to scrape - the entire internet assumes that everybody is American, and then just handles non-Americans with error-messages at the last step. The author of this blog would find a very different functionality for his bot if he were located in, say, Australia.
- kuschku 11y agoAs a German, I gave up on online contests and giveaways if they are written in English. Luckily I have the ability to see from the language almost instantly if it is available here, but I’d imagine for an Australian or British person it would end up a lot harder.
- Pxtl 11y agoYeah, I'm Canadian and despite the short trip from the border we're usually ineligible for these things. It happens occasionally, but not terribly often. I just mentioned Australians because they'd be the more extreme case. More frustrating is just google-searching for products and whatnot.
- effinggames 11y agohttp://i.imgur.com/9Zv4V.gif http://i.imgur.com/9Zv4V.gif
- urs2102 11y agoThis is brilliant.
- anc84 11y agoAmazing! I thought about doing that but gave up because I was too lazy to configure a bot. I would have never expected it to work so well.
- jdkanani 11y agoMy friend and I once wrote a python script to participate in Q&A contest (first answer will win the contest) on twitter. That running script actually prints an recent question of particular twitter handler and asks for prompt to type an answer. Once you type an answer (after googling or whatever you want), it just posts that answer in reply of that question's tweet. We also decided to hit the google search for answer and crawl answer but I think it would need some work.
- giarc 11y agoYou ever win?
- CatsoCatsoCatso 11y agoThis is amazing, is the source available anywhere? The full list of winnings is staggering. http://www.hscott.net/winnings.txt http://www.hscott.net/winnings.txt
- jsingleton 11y agoA few funny gems in there: whatever I want written on some girl's body in chocolate (tried to get her to write Maxwell's equations, but she said no) something from a gay porn star. I was afraid to dig through his twitter page to find the original contest...
- justinplasmeier 11y agoI certainly wasn't expecting this: -1/8 oz of South OG marijuana
- 6stringmerc 11y agoEven the gimmick ones are dutifully reported! -A "warm sense of fulfillment"
- tomkwok 11y agoI've created a word cloud of the list. http://i.imgur.com/vXWzqSQ.png http://i.imgur.com/vXWzqSQ.png
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- caffeinewriter 11y agoI'm curious, what'd you use to generate this?
- denzil_correa 11y agoWordle is one such website. http://www.wordle.net http://www.wordle.net
- kanyuga 11y agoThere was a bot/person winning competitions run by local companies in Kenya, that selected a random winner from tweets that had their hashtags: https://eugeneqaana.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/the-safcom-scams/ https://eugeneqaana.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/the-safcom-scam... (Ignore the wrong conclusion though) So to answer the writer, yes, someone had thought of it before. It was probably not as sophisticated.
- OedipusRex 11y agoI feel like whoever ran that contest should have checked to see that all of the winning accounts were connected.
- weavie 11y agoDo you really have to declare and pay tax on competition winnings in the US? Would you have to do this in the UK? I never would have thought..
- CatsoCatsoCatso 11y agohttp://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/sep/10/do-you-pay-tax-lottery-win http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/sep/10/do-you-pay-tax-... HM Revenue & Customs doesn't regard lottery winnings as income, so all prizes are tax-free – hurray! However, there could be tax implications once you've banked your winnings. I'm struggling to find other answers, the Daily Mail's 'This is Money' website says the opposite is true and that it's counted as freelancer income. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-2551709/I-just-won-5-000-industry-award-Do-I-pay-tax-it.html http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-2551709/I... HMRC has produced guidance in the context of freelancers who win prizes and the short version is that they view most prizes as taxable income of the freelancer. Grey area? An interesting area.
- onion2k 11y agohttp://blog.national-lottery.co.uk/meet-man-pays-money/#.VcCY2flVhBc http://blog.national-lottery.co.uk/meet-man-pays-money/#.VcC... - A blog by the guy who pays out the money. It's tax free.
- shawabawa3 11y agoFor the lottery, yes. I believe because the tickets themselves are taxed you aren't taxed when you win. I believe the same is true of gambling winnings (The reasoning being that you aren't given tax refunds when you lose, so it's unfair to tax when you win) Prizes that you haven't payed for entry might be different.
- pizzeys 11y ago> I believe the same is true of gambling winnings (The reasoning being that you aren't given tax refunds when you lose, so it's unfair to tax when you win) Which becomes really interesting when you consider professional poker players.
- mydpy 11y agoAwesome morning read! Nice hack!
- noso 11y agoAwesome work and a great read!
- user24 11y agoWhat did they do with the things they didn't claim? Just seems a shame to have let the unclaimed prizes go to waste.
- adamzubi 11y agohttp://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/07/list-of-java-projects.html http://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/07/list-of-java-projects...
- arxpoetica 11y agoSeriously the best thing I've ever read on Hacker News.
- jchomali 11y agoLol
- apetresc 11y agoThe news to me here is that those contests actually pay out. I assumed the vast majority were just marketing ploys, where they never picked the winner, or chose one of their own sock puppets. After all, who would ever know?
- downandout 11y agoI thought the same before reading this, however I have seen alot of legitimate radio stations that run contests use Twitter for the "share to win" concept - far more than I have seen them try to do it through Facebook or Instagram. Based solely on my own observations and experience, I suspect that the vast majority of contests you see on IG/FB are not legitimate, but at least some of those on Twitter are. It's funny that this came up. Just the other day I heard them running a "text us to win" contest on the radio while driving and I thought I should create an app that enables find-and-share capabilities for text-to-win contests.
- timdorr 11y agoThe FTC: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2007/04/sweepstakes-promoters-will-pay-14-million-settle-ftc-charges https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2007/04/sweep... http://supermarketnews.com/retail-amp-financial/ap-settles-charges-over-sweepstakes http://supermarketnews.com/retail-amp-financial/ap-settles-c... https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2015/02/ftc-obtains-95-million-judgment-against-sweepstakes-promoter?utm_source=govdelivery https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2015/02/ftc-o...
- nerfhammer 11y agoThe FTC only involves itself with prize contests where you pay to enter. These twitter contests apparently require only retweeting something or following someone
- danielweber 11y agoSweepstakes, by definition, have "no purchase necessary to win." The first link is to the FTC cracking down on a (alleged) sweepstakes.
- vijayr 11y agoWow, very interesting. Can this be used for other purposes - like finding ideas for an app/website/biz, finding deep discounts on products etc?
- haddr 11y agoBy looking at the list of winnings, It's quite funny how cheap you can get some people to retweet (and probably get some more audience) by offering such things as: -free infographic -some logo -lipstick from Avon -graphic -wall planner (and so on and so forth)
- itomatik 11y agoGreat read! I wonder if similar bot can be created for instagram. Lots of marketing contests over there as well :)
- gadders 11y agoAnd Facebook.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- danr4 11y agoThis is so impressive it left most voters speechless. 269 points and only 35 comments at the time of this comment.
- pc86 11y agoIt's neat but not exactly the type of thing that sparks lively debate.
- wangarific 11y agoI disagree!
- anc84 11y agoEveryone is busy hacking their own competitor.
- Sommer 11y agoReminds me of Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius
- e28eta 11y agoHis favorite thing is the hat, "because it really embodies the totally random outcome of these contest". I think it shows what's wrong with his idea: he has a prize that doesn't really have any significance to him. However I'm guessing other entrants to the contest (if there were any) actually are fans of the show, and would value the hat much higher.
- themodelplumber 11y agoThe hat came with a Visa gift card. If you look at his full text list, it's actually pretty impressive and full of things that would probably have significance to him.
- michaelmior 11y agoWhile most likely not illegal, this feels rather unethical to me. Presumably most of these contests are promoters trying to use the contests as a marketing tool and the prizes as a reward to fans. This bot just aims to take as much as possible.
- Mahn 11y agoI wonder what is Twitter stance on this, as a company. Do they allow it because it's technically speaking not illegal, or do they ban it if they find it because it's questionable at best?
- phlandis 11y agoThey like bots as long as they aren't too obnoxious as they increase their number of users.
- sandworm101 11y agoI'd rather presume that most of these contests are actually other bots designed to generate buzz to promote events or, more likely, harvest market research data. I have no sympathy for such devices and have no problem watching robots fight over cowboy hats.
- anigbrowl 11y agoWait a minute, your response to other competitors maybe losing out is to critique the operators of the contest? I don't think anyone claimed that the Twitter competitions were operated by true fans who'd be disappointed to have their offerings games, but that true fans might be interested in winning some of the prices, notwithstanding that they are offered as part of a marketing campaign.
- sandworm101 11y agoYes. I'd stake that the majority of retweets today are in fact bots. See below... "OK. 1 more chance. If no one RTs, replies, or even talks about this tweet, I will donate £15,000 to a charity of your choice. Any questions?" --> 369 retweets, most by suspected bots. https://twitter.com/rickygervais/status/324632844829876224 https://twitter.com/rickygervais/status/324632844829876224
- guiomie 11y agoHe should run a few bots in parallel to augment his odds.
- undrcvr-lagggal 11y agoIndeed. It was probably hard to do because he's using Python which has problems due to its GIL. I myself would have went for Go, whoms CSP model matches this problem perfectly.
- lclarkmichalek 11y agoHe could just run the code in multiple process. Enough with the GIL bullshit.
- undrcvr-lagggal 11y agoThat would be inefficient because you'd need to allocate extra stack, process datastructures, context switching, etc.
- guiomie 11y agoFrom experience, when you can, it's just better spawning multiple processes over doing multithreading.
- YogeeKnows 11y agoPer that xkcd graphic, I did try the ebay 1 cent auctions. But then stopped it as it was all junk from china in epackets.
- callmeed 11y agoOne crazy idea I have is to run contests on Twitter where I post obscure movie lines or music lyrics and the person who replies first with the answer wins. I wonder if someone could create a winning bot.
- baddox 11y agoHere's something random for you. The "tupperware lids that have been warped in the dishwasher" contest is almost certainly a reference to Jeff Foxworthy's 1998 concert album "Totally Committed," where he was joking about the crap that people sell at garage sales.
- Nemant 11y agoYou could create your own contests with the prizes and see how many followers you gain. It'd be nice to see how effective are these strategies.
- NDizzle 11y agoLet's extend this with a network of geographically diverse users of the script on different accounts. That way our chances of winning AND our chance of having someone near the contest are both increased.
- mhartl 11y agoThis was awesome, but I was disappointed to read that he didn't cash in the New York Fashion Week prize. Sure, it would have cost him some $$$, but what a story! I bet it'd have been worth paying a small premium for the adventure.