My only caveat would be that if you expand to NCAA sports then you should add a warning reminding college athletes not to enter because they could lose eligibility. (Since you're targeting college students using their real names.) It's not really a legal liability, but then again you probably don't want colleges complaining to Facebook about your app because some idiots lost a year of football eligibility.
Very true. Unfortunately I'm not sure if we can run anything NCAA there (at least basketball) because Facebook sold exclusive bracket rights to a big media company. Ah the joys of non-open platforms.
It's 16 weeks. There are 17 regular season weeks, and we run all but the 1st.
We don't use a line, so the odds are better than that though. You can usually start off picking 10+ point favorites (which, if memory serves me, win about 85% of the time) but as you use up the better teams that worsens. For instance week 1 if you pick New England, you're a 16.5 pt favorite and will win almost always.
But yeah, the tiebreakers will handle it if it happens.
How come this contest doesn't have the standard legal rules "only in 48 US states" and "at least 18 years of age"? Every contest I see has those, though I'm curious why.
Well, our lawyer said not to bother basically. We're not randomly selecting a winner (in which case you have to jump through all sorts of legal hoops). It's a skill game with no buy-in.
I strongly suspect that they sell TVs in Australia. So, perhaps no need to ship it from US. If somebody in, say, Zimbabwe wins and you have to go through some hassle to have it delivered, the PR opportunity will be well worth it.
Well I signed up. (Although I can't see myself winning)
(and if you want bug reports on here - when I tried to skip inviting my friends it took me to:
http://apps.new.facebook.com/survivor_pool/invitations/send_...
and gave the following error message:
"There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of Football Survivor Pool are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged - if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!"
In my opinion you're making all the same mistakes I made when I started working on social applications. You had a idea first and are now trying to make it viral. Thats the wrong order. You need to get all your viral channels defined and working and only then are you allowed to have an idea :)
I just wanted to reiterate that this is GOOD advice. Design your product to fit the viral channels; don't try to fit the viral channels into the product you already have.
ha I never bought into that whole "invites are spam" bit. Generally people like apps and invites. But its hard to believe that because the minority is very vocal.
If you wanna chat over email I wouldn't mind sharing some tips.
Invites are not spam by themselves, but they're abused by many apps in a way that makes them spam. And you're very wrong if you think the silent majority enjoyed the FB spam fest a while back.
Abusing invites with more "viral channels" will only get the app into a lower invite threshold. FWIW I think a free TV is a pretty good incentive and will have people choosing the friends most likely to use the app. I do agree on promoting more the contest and the free tv thing, people tend to not read anything without flashy colors and big fonts.
