Million Dollar Drawing! To Enter, Just Retweet This Message #OMDD

You’d think with all the problems with spammers on Twitter, every real person would take great pains not to add to the spam themselves.

So why then, does my twitter page fill up every day with messages like: We’re giving away a free airline ticket today! FOLLOW @Orbitz & RT this msg to be eligible to win http://blog.orbitz.com/orbitz_blog/2009/06/orbitz-twitter-giveaway-official-rules.html

Last week everyone was posting #squarespace tweets. Squarespace wasn’t quite so bad, at least people could write whatever they wanted, you just had to make sure and add the hashtag somewhere in the tweet.

Don’t get me wrong, winning either an iPhone or a plane trip would be nice, but when I see a new retweet of the same product every time I refresh my screen, it gets a bit frustrating.

Retweeting to draw traffic isn’t a new trick. Remember twibes? With twibes, you could join or create a group to follow a topic you were interested in. Only problem? In order to join, you had to tweet that you’d joined.

Even worse than sites that have you tweet to be included are sites that ask you to DM your friends.

Just a few days ago, I looked at a new twitter game, “two tweets and a lie”. In order to play, you enter two truths about yourself and one lie. Then people can see how well they know you.

The problem? When you click invite, unless you’ve unchecked it, it sends direct messages (DMs) to up to 200 of your followers (you can select how many to send it to). Their excuse for asking you to spam people’s DMs? “We need your love!”

Sorry, I don’t think spamming DMs should even be an option. I decided not to play, took my ball and went home.

So what about the Million Dollar Drawing?

Well, my plan was to get my 6 year old to draw a picture of a million dollar bill. He started it and quickly decided that drawing dollars is hard work. But if I can get either him or my 11 year old to draw one for me, we’ll figure a contest and give away the picture.

Any suggestions on the kind of contest to have? Only one hard and fast rule, it definitely won’t require spamming your friends on twitter.