Earlier this week we launched two exciting new sponsored contests. The first, in partnership with the new online mini-series Prom Queen created by Michael Eisner’s (yes, that Michael Eisner) Vuguru studio is the Most Outrageous Dress Photo Contest with the winner taking home $250 for a new prom dress. The second contest is for The Motley Fool CAPS. For this contest users get to vote for their favorite Fool-produced 27-second stock pitch, then create their own pitch and enter it into the 27-Second Stock Pitch Contest for a chance to win $5,000!

So whatever your poison, prom queens or stocks, submit your entry for a chance to win.

Mike

Wow, we’ve been busy! Here’s a quick update on all the new stuff happening on the site.

• New Homepage – We’ve completely redesigned the homepage to include Most Popular Contests, Recent Winners and People modules.
• Customized Contests – Now you can customize the look and feel of any contest you create with colors and background images.
• Search – You can easy search for people, contest entries and contests.
• People Tab – We’ve brought our growing user base to the forefront with a new people tab. Find and meet new people!
• Add Friends – We’ve made it easier for you to invite your friends to join Votigo with a new Add Friends Feature.
• Voting Widgets – To help you or your friends win contests we created a “Voting Widget” that you can add to your MySpace, Hi5 or other website. Just copy and paste the “Embed” code you see on the entry page with your entry. See an example of a Voting Widget for my entry in the Travel Video contest below.

On the contest front the Augustana Photo Contest ended. Congratulations to our first place winner “fisch22”! You can view all the winners here.

Three new Featured Contests with prizes have launched too!

• “Modest Mouse ‘We’ve Got Everything’ Contest” - 14 winners will each receive a 2GB iPod Nano, a Sony Turntable and the special-edition “‘We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank” CD package
• “The Cartel & Santa Cruz Snowboard Video Contest” – The winner receives an 07-08 Santa Cruz Jon Kooley Pro model snowboard, a SONY MiniDV Handycam® Camcorder DCR-HC38 and a signed copy of “Chroma” from Cartel and Epic Records!
• “Spring Break Photo Contest” – Win $500!

As always please let us know what’s on your mind by sending us feedback.

Mike

Welcome to the new votigo blog! This is the place to find out about all the cool stuff that we’ve got planned for you guys. We’ll be posting about new and exciting contests, features that we’ve added, and any other news we think you might find interesting. Plus, this will be a spot where you can let us now what you think. If you’re excited about something we’ve done, there’s something new that you’d like to see, or you just wanna share with us (something related to Votigo, hopefully!), just let us know by leaving a comment. We love comments, so don’t be shy.

Maybe you’re wondering, what exactly is Votigo? Basically, this site is all about fun contests. Anybody can start their own customized contest whether it’s a contest to see who has the coolest reggae videos, or a contest to find the best self-portait. Then, people submit photos or videos to the contests and other people vote. Most of the contests are just for fun, but sometimes you can win cool prizes too. Mmmmm, prizes!

That’s about it for now. It’s been a blast seeing all of you on the site… we love checking out all of your entries and contests. Keep it up!

*Vlad

Votigo is an online community that allows any business, band, organization or individual to easily create and share their own customized photo or video contest. Votigo believes strongly in the benefits of online contests as an entertaining way to encourage customer loyalty and build community in a controlled environment.

Contests provide marketers a great opportunity to engage their customers and safely participate with user-generated content. Until now, it’s been too difficult and too expensive to create and manage a compelling online contest. There were no turnkey solutions available to marketers. Votigo solves this problem by providing a simple-to-use, fully customizable contest service.

For users creating and entering their own contests, Votigo offers an exciting and fun way to showcase and share your photos and videos. You can enter as many contests as you like, comment on other entries, become fans of your favorite users, share contests and entries with friends, promote yourself and help promote others.