Last week, Mothership.sg reported on Poulet restaurant's Facebook photo contest, where some contestants were miffed that the eventual winner took advantage of the ambiguous rules and made use of fake Likes to gain an edge.

The winner, Eugene Seah, 19, has revealed how he secured his 1,200 plus Facebook Likes and won a holiday for two to Paris.

Straightforward, but ambiguous rules

The rules of the contest were simple: Pose for a picture taken in Poulet, upload it onto Facebook and the most Likes wins. The contest ran for two weeks in February to coincide with Valentine's Day.

After being accused of buying Likes to win the contest, Eugene Seah, a business administration student, told The Straits Times today that he had traded currency from online role-playing game MapleStory for Facebook Likes instead.

The currency, which includes virtual money and in-game items, such as swords, can be earned by playing the game.

Through this method, Seah explained that he did not pay money to purchase Likes as it was an exchange.

His justifications?

"Some contestants asked their real friends, I asked my virtual ones. I can't possibly check if their Facebook accounts are real or not," Seah said.

He also said: "Poulet did not state the specifics and smarter people play the game this way."

A more serious violation

However, Seah might have broken one of the rules: He did not set his Facebook privacy settings to public and left it private, but maintained that Poulet was fine with this arrangement when he contacted the restaurant.

Poulet, on the other hand, could not confirm this arrangement.

Following the revelation of Seah's tactic in the media, Poulet's Facebook page is experiencing another round of war of words as contestants are still decrying the purchase of Likes.

But what they should be objecting to is Seah's privatising of his post instead.

Because by obscuring the number of Likes, Seah had an unfair advantage as it prevented a full-on escalation from the onset of the contest, as the closest second place photo -- which was made public all along -- already had 900 Likes. (Note: Seah eventually won with 1,200 plus Likes.)

This means that Seah might not have won eventually because the second place photo might have tried harder to compete and oust Seah from the top spot -- if there was knowledge that Seah was in the top spot in the first place.

Therefore, I'm sorry, Poulet, you messed up this contest.

Top photo from Poulet Facebook

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