Contagious Media

Eyebeam, a non-profit center for art and technology, is sponsoring a "Contagious Media Showdown" contest. The winner of the $2000 grand prize will be the site with the most unique visits. A $1000 prize will be given to the site with an Alexa ranking of higher than 20,000. Another $1000 prize will be given to the site with the most links from blogs in Technorati, and another $1000 prize will be given to the most popular site under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons license.

The following restrictions are in place: "You may not use paid advertisements, automated processes that fake traffic, or scams that produce traffic without people actually seeing your content."

These restrictions still leave the table open to a number of tactics that might be considered "below the table." So is this really a measure of what's the most "contagious?" Or just who can bend the rules and get a ton of traffic?

Link via Kottke.