Bix: A New Yahoo Company

I just saw it on my Yahoo page today. The little blue "New" tag caught my eye so I had to check it out. Apparently, Bix, which I'd never heard of before, has been acquired by Yahoo. Bix is a place where you can create and enter contests, as well as judge contests that you and others create. There's no need to audition for American Idol. Go submit an entry in one of the many karaoke contests. If comedy or lip-syncing is your thing, they have contests for you too. You can pick from several categories including a cappella, art, beauty, comedy, dance, karaoke, lip-sync and photography. Then there's the category for other which has anything from "who do you think is the hottest celebrity" to "which is the cutest kitten". To lame for your taste? How about "which animal do you think would dominate the human more? The Death Stalker Scorpion or the African Spitting Scorpion." You decide.

You sign into Bix using your Yahoo account. From there you decide what you want to do. If you're not ready to put yourself in the spotlight, try voting on a few contests. All entries are accompanied by profile pages where you can leave comments, let the entry's owner know you're a fan or email their entry to a friend. When you become their fan, your picture shows up on their profile page and they can then send you bulletins. In turn, they become a favorite person on your profile page and can send you bulletins. To see your profile page, you simply click on your user name in the upper-right hand corner of the screen. It's a whole nother online community just waiting for you to come and explore.

Entering a contest is easy. You just pick which contest you want to enter, create your entry and submit it. There are contests where you can win actual prizes. They're noted by a $ in red and Bix makes sure you don't get jilted. Entries can be uploaded in video, audio, photo or text formats depending on what's needed for the contest you're entering. Some contests will require you to use your webcam, digital camera or microphone hooked up to your computer to record your entry. If you're still not quite ready to enter a contest, you can go to your profile page and make a practice entry and even use it to enter a contest later.

Don't see a contest your crazy about? Then make your own contest. You can use your imagination to make it as crazy or as lame as you want. As soon as your finished creating your contest, it will start immediately and end on the date you pick. You also decide when voting can start. Contests can be face-offs where people compete head-to-head or a debate where several people can enter. To avoid having to delete entries that are inappropriate, you can select to approve entries before their submitted. To give away a prize you have to first contact Biz and get their approval. The contest you create can be private so you can invite just your friends to enter or you can make it public for anyone to enter. Bix also has a widget that can be customized and put on your website to let people click through to your contest.

Winning a contest is decided by either a Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down or Face-Off format. In a thumbs up/thumbs down formatted contest, you can vote on as many entries as you want, but only once for each entry. For a face-off format, it's a little confusing, but you keep voting on random pairs of entries until the over-all voting is done and then you vote once on the pairs that are left, or something like that. They have a great frequently asked questions page that will explain it in detail.

Bix is a very entertaining site and can be loads of fun! You'll get caught up in the excitement as you vote for who you think is best and banter back and forth with others in the community. New contests have already been posted. What are you waiting for? Go have some fun!