Get new Mixx powers and a chance to win an Apple MacBook!

Because we love, love our Mixxers and the fantastic community they’ve helped us create, we decided that it was time to give a little something back to our most loyal users.

So without further ado, we bring you the Loyal Mixxer Sweepstakes!

Want to know what you’re playing for? The Grand Prize (well, the only prize—we are just a little startup, after all)? A super-cool Mixx t-shirt or hat? Nope, not this time. How about a brand-spankin’ new Apple MacBook?

No—your eyes are not playing tricks on you: a new Apple MacBook! (Yeah, we can’t believe we are giving this away either; we wanted to keep it for ourselves, but Chris found out and put us all in time out). And unlike some other give-aways, this isn’t a one-in-a-gazillion chance. This sweepstakes is only open to those Mixxers who achieve Power Mixxer status—so your odds are much better than playing in that local lottery!

To be eligible for this awesome sweepstakes, you must be not just a Mixxer (though we do love you, too); you must be a Loyal Mixxer. “But how am I to know if I’m truly a loyal Mixxer?” you ask. Excellent question, grasshopper! To qualify, you must have been Mixxing with us for long enough to have achieved 500 Karma points. If you’re not sure if you qualify, check your Karma points or visit the Entry Page.

And entering the Loyal Mixxer Sweepstakes is literally as easy as 1,2,3 and will take less time than you’ll spend reading this post. All you have to do is go to www.mixx.com/sweepstakes/join, provide us some general information (to prove that you’re human), read and agree to the Sweepstakes rules and regulations, hit Submit and—presto!—you’re done!

The Fine Print
This should probably be in teeny, tiny little type but we work a lot and six-point type hurts our eyes. It’s also harder for you to read, so: The Sweepstakes will begin on March 18th, 2009 at 6:00 a.m. EST and end on March 27th, 2009 at 11:59 a.m. EST. We’ll announce the winner no later than April 15, 2009. Any entries submitted prior to the start date or after the end date will not be accepted.

But Wait! There’s More!
If you’re eligible for the Loyal Mixxer Sweepstakes, you’re also eligible to become a PowerMixxer, which offers more ways for you to contribute to the Mixx community: You’ll be authorized to hand out more kudos; you’ll have the ability to relate items; you’ll get a special badge for your profile, as well as a few other goodies down the road.

You don’t need to do anything to get your PowerMixxer designation. We’ll put you on the list for those powers when you register for the Sweepstakes, and then they’ll be active a short time after the Sweepstakes is over. We’ll let you know the exact timing in a later post.

We know that you’re probably in a hurry to try to get your hands on that MacBook, but before you rush off to register for the Sweepstakes, we have a little more for you!

Spam, Spam, Glorious Spam—I do not like it, Sam I Am*
With the economy down in the dumps, a lot of people are eating more SPAM.  While Hormel brings the people ever more SPAM, we’re trying to make sure there’s a less spam in the Mixx. While we accept that spam, happens, we’ve come up with a few more tools to help get rid of it. To date, we’ve launched a suite of spam fighting tools, some that you can see, as well as a few that only we can see. We’ve already made it easy to personalize YourMixx so that you only get the Mixx content that is relevant to you. You can form public and private groups and communities—lots of them! And you’re able and encouraged to report spam whenever you see it.

Despite the best efforts of everyone in the Mixx community and here at HQ, determined spammers still manage to squeak through, hiding themselves in the dark recesses of Mixx. As of this morning, however, we’ve taken another of those places away. Joe has designed a nifty spam-fighting tool that uses some top-secret AI (of course, we can’t tell you or we’d have to kill you) to determine the likelihood of a submission being considered spam by the general Mixx community. If a submission looks good, we’ll promote it into the Recent bucket on the Popular Page. If it looks a little fishy, it will get tossed into the Unfiltered bucket.  The outright bad stuff just continues to be disallowed from the get-go. Its not going to be bullet-proof right out of the gate, but we’ve got some buttons and knobs and fancy sliders we can use to help tune it as we go.

By default, everyone will see the Filtered bucket, but you can flip back and forth from Filtered/Recent to Unfiltered/Everything right there on the Recent page. This switch is for those of you who like to go wading through the suspicious stuff in search of the hidden gem.  If that’s not really your thing, then you’ll see only the best of what your fellow Mixxers have to offer.

At the request of some of our more avid Spam Fighters, we’ve added a feedback loop to our spam reporting. This means that, if you like, we’ll update you via MixxMail with the resolution of any abuse report you submit, whether it’s for a story, photo or video. Also, when you report a submission as spam, we’ll indicate that right there on the All Voters page.

As always, we love Feedback, so please let us know what you think!

Love,
Your Mixx Team

*Our most humble apologies to Dr. Seuss

UPDATE:  In response to a FAQ:  SuperMixxers are eligible for the sweepstakes as well, of course.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 9:13 am and is filed under Launch, Mixx. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.