from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington A new service called ScratchYourself came to our attention today. It’s a fairly simple Flash application that lets users upload an image and build a lottery-style scratch card from it. During the beta period people have a chance to win some very limited cash prizes that total $90 or so per day across all winners.
Once a scratch card has been created, users can email it to friends or embed it on their site. I created a quick scratch card with our logo and have embedded it below.
What interests me more than the front end, which would easily be duplicated, is the business model and payments infrastructure they’ve put in place. Users have an incentive to create and embed these on their blogs, MySpace page, etc.: if you create a scratchcard and someone wins a prize, you get the same prize as the creator of the card. Prizes are awarded, at the winner’s choice, via paypal, mailed check or amazon gift certificate.
The company’s business model is to attract advertisers to sponsor prizes (cash, products, coupons). If ScratchYourself turns out to be trustworthy and can circumnavigate the rather complicated federal and state regulations governing sweepstakes, brands could be attracted to this. You get a good long look at the image underneath the scratch area, which is more than can be said for most banner advertising. And publishers will like the ability to win the same prizes as their readers.
Shycast and Bix (acquired by Yahoo) are also experimenting with brand based contests, albeit through video (and Shycast is also a social network).
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Here's a quick review of the most popular URL redirection servicesto help you pick the right one for your job.
TinyURL.com - This is a name synonymous with URL redirection with maximum number of users. You can drag their bookmarklet in your browser and create short URLs in a single click. The advantage is that users can preview the web address embedded in TinyURL before visiting the actual website. With Preview, Without Preview
urlTea.com - A relatively new but promising URL shortening service. It allows you to describe or annotate the destination website in the short URL itself. For instance, http://urltea.com/g20 is the same as http://urltea.com/g20?my_site but the latter makes more sense to the visitor. And you can also use Google Talk or Yahoo! Messenger to create short URLs through a buddy called teabot@urltea.com.
SnipURL.com - With SnipURL, you can choose your own web address with some meaningful text instead of using random addresses generated by tinyurl.com. This will help visitors get an idea of what they are about to click. It is possible to modify the underlying URL without changing the existing SnipURL address. Best of all, SnipURL can generate private URLs that can only be accessed after providing a password.
Shorl.com - This may well be the favorite URL redirect service for bloggers and website owners since it provides usage statistics of your short URLs (i.e., Number of Hits). When a user clicks a URL created by shorl.com, he is shown the web address of the destination for few seconds before the actual redirection.
Now that's an intelligent design since users can opt-out even after clicking the short URL. Nothing deceptive about it.
Final Thoughts - Shorl.com gives control in the hands of the user and automatically increases the level of trust. SnipURL gives you click through stats and more control over URL text so that makes it my favorite URL shortening service.
[I personally use these services for sharing hyperlinks in my newspaper columns that are published in the Hindustan Times and Financial Express.]
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