This time last week, prompted by Luke Wroblewski’s research, I asked you to suggest Mad Lib style sign-up text for your favourite websites. By way of encouragement, I promised to dig around my hotel room and find some kind of prizes; a signed copy of my eBay-auction-winning book, a TechCrunch tshirt, a little bottle of shampoo – stuff like that.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the quality of the prizes on offer, the competition was flooded with entries. Over 30 of them in fact, almost all of which were from people who had actually understood the entry requirements. Some had even got within a mile of being funny. Well done, them.
And so to the winners, in reverse order of funniness…
For effort alone, third prize goes to Tommy Vallier for this suggestion for LinkedIn:
Hello! My name is ____ and I’d like to join LinkedIn. My email address is ____, my website is ____, I have an RSS feed at ____ and I am on twitter as @____. I’m interested in ____, ____, ____ and expertise requests.
I am currently employed as ____ at ____ and as ____ at ____. Before that I was employed as a ____ at ____ and prior to that I did ____ for ____.
I went to school at ____ where I received a ____ in ____ and also at ____ where I received a ____.
Because I worked with ____, ____, ____ and ____ at various points in my life, I’d like to be connected to them – even though I hardly speak with them anymore. Oh, and connect me with ____, too, as they’re my current boss and I don’t want to look unprofessional.
In the last short while I’ve worked with ____ and ____, so please send them a message telling them I’ve signed up and ask them to give me recommendations for the ____ I did for them. I’d like give my own to ____ for ____.
I want to join a group devoted to ____ – because that’s what I currently do, and ____ because that’s what everyone thinks I should be doing. Have me join a ____ group too, because everyone else is doing it.
I think that’s everything about me. Please let me know when you’ve found me a new career.
Thanks.
Second prize, largely thanks to the dig at Yahoo!, goes to ‘Laura’ for her Flickr sign-up suggestion…
I feel dark inside, like this photo of a ______ with an emphasis on the shadow(s). This is the only reason I would conceivably have a Yahoo ID, and it is __________. Please make my password an anagram of Ansel Adams or ________.
And last, but the exact opposite of least, the winner. An entry that understood the spirit of the competition, right down to the use of punctuation as comedy timing. For that, and for masterful use of tautology, take a bow Matt Shaw. You win first prize for your proposed sign-up text for DeviantArt…
My name is __________. I feel the dark powers compel me to join this site, to post my angstily-drawn pictures of half-naked ________s and faeries, all of which are elaborate metaphors for the constant state of _________ in which I perpetually, endlessly, forever find myself. I don’t expect you to understand; no one understands. Please make my password “unicorns”.
Kudos Matt, Laura and Tommy. Assuming the email addresses you used when you commented are genuine, you’ll be genning an email from me in the next day or two to make prize arrangements.