Do John and Scott Ferber know what they're getting into? According to a recent press release that came floating into my inbox, they've decided to start something called the Miss Internet Pageant. Aspiring beauty contest winners (and we know there are probably millions of them out there, alas) can send in a couple of photos and/or video of themselves, and the winner gets chosen by the Internet! Or rather, gets chosen by whoever decides to go and vote for someone at the website, and you can apparently vote for as many contestants as you want, twice a day, and as many times as you like.
So, all you aspiring Miss Internet 2008 winners -- all you have to do is convince enough of your friends, or even complete strangers, to come and click on your photo. Or, you could always take a quick course in Java or C++, and write a script that would effectively accomplish the same thing! The choice is up to you. And apparently you don't have to answer any skill-testing questions, like the one that threw Miss Teen South Carolina off so badly awhile ago. You stand to win "up to" $25,000 in cash and prizes.
It's no secret that the idea of an Internet-voting contest is fraught with problems. As evidence, I submit the story of Time magazine's Person of the Century contest, which came within a hair of being won by Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey (thanks to a blockbuster campaign by Turkish supporters) as well as the People magazine contest in 1998 to find the most beautiful people in the world, which was won by one of Howard Stern's sidekicks, a little person who called himself Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf.
It seems likely, however, that John and Scott Ferber know exactly what they're doing: the two brothers were behind the rise of Advertising.com in the 1990s, which was eventually sold to America Online in 2004 for $434-million in cash. The brothers stayed at AOL for a time, but then took what the company described as some "much needed time off" and developed a site called Guess Now, which lets you guess the outcome of future events and then pays you cash if you guess correctly.
When you go to the Miss Internet Pageant site, it redirects you to Guess Now's servers, and to become a contestant you have to open a Guess Now account. Coincidence? I think not. Interestingly enough, the Miss Internet Pageant says if you can't upload photos of yourself, you can email them to this address: steve@vandelayindustries.com. Van Delay Industries is the name of the fictitious latex company that George Costanza worked for on Seinfeld.
Update:
John Ferber contacted me to say that his brother Scott isn't involved with the Miss Internet Pageant or Guess Now -- and added that his holding company, Vandelay Industries, is a legitimate company and an "homage to my favourite television series." He said he "tried to acquire Kramerica Industries, but they weren't for sale."
