After two weeks of launching our first Contest, here are the stats:

New Users to the Facebook Group : 170

New Users who connected to the Site : 40

Photo Submissions to our First Official Contest : 35

There are still two weeks to go for folks to get their submissions in. I hope we can double our participation by the time Voting begins.

Thanks to everyone who has participated so far!

In order to get some feedback on the site, I have opened up our first contest.  The site will very likely have bugs, issues, or warrant some feedback (use our Facebook Group to post feedback). So please help this site improve!

More goodies to come for contests once I get the kinks out.  If you would like to participate in this contest simply join our Facebook Group, Connect to the Site, and submit your photos! Hopefully the bugs are not so bad that you cannot at least get this far.  If you find bugs – have patience, I will work on them as soon as I find out. Issue likely will be around connecting with Facebook and album permissions for upload.

Details below …

To keep informed of this Event and its participation windows, attend the Facebook Event for this Contest.

1. Contest Announcement :

Contest Announcement May 24th, 2009

ThirstyPhoto’s first Contest is announced to all eligible members of the Facebook Group ThirstyPhoto. Join this Group if you have not already.

This is a Category Assignment with Peer Voting. Category for this Contest is pretty broad – just to get us started on the site – so the theme will be Water.  Submissions must represent a form of water within the composition. All photo submissions must be taken by the submitter.  The submission must provide minimal EXIF information. The submitter retains full ownership of the photo.

Before submitting please read the Basic Rules post to avoid disqualified submissions and ineligibility.To learn more about general Contest structure see Anatomy of a Contest.

Submission Album (click image):

The prize for 1st place is a copy of Adobe Lightroom 2. No other prizes will be awarded.  First, second and third place submissions will be showcased in the Group’s Showcase album.

The Submission Window opens May 24th, 2009. All submissions must be posted no later than June 14th, 2009. There is no Maximum Submission Count for this contest.

The Voting Window will be open for 15 days from June 15th, 2009 to June 30th, 2009. Members who have submitted a photo to the album will be notified by email on June 15th (make sure to join the contest’s Facebook Event!) once voting begins so that you all can participate in the Peer Voting.

Contest winners will be chosen by peer votes, and if there are any ties – a judging panel will break the tie. Please read the How Voting Works post before participating in the selection process.

The Contest closes  June 30th, 2009 and all winners will be notified via email.

The first official contest is to open soon.  There is still plenty of layout development to do, and even more bugs to be found. I hope to get enough participation from ‘patient’ members to help collect some constructive feedback.  This site is still in its early stages – but there is enough functionality  for some alpha testing…  Stay Tuned!