14 DAY TRIAL // A new Windows Live Hotmail contest is designed to award a year’s worth of house cleaning services for the person with the messiest desk. Hotmail Sweep: Messiest Desk Contest is now live on Facebook, and customers need only accounts on the social network and on Hotmail or Live.com, in order to be permitted to participate in Microsoft’s latest initiative for its email service.
According to the official rules, the Hotmail Sweep: Messiest Desk Contest is only opened to customers in the United States.
The Redmond company reveals the steps that need to be taken in order to sign up:
“1. Have or sign up for a Hotmail or Live.com email address.
2. Print or display the Hotmail logo clearly on your messy desk and/or office. You must include the Hotmail logo in the picture in order to be eligible.
3. Upload the photo of your messy desk or office and include a short explanation of why your email inbox needs an intervention.
4. From April 20th to April 22nd, you’ll have a chance to vote on which of the top 5 photos and entries will win.”
The Sweep: Messiest Desk Contest already started as of the end of March 2011, and will last until April 22.
The owner of the messiest desk will get to win a $2,500 gift card for Merry Maids services, the software giant said.
The contest is designed to promote Sweep, a new feature introduced in the latest major upgrade to Windows Live Hotmail.
A recent survey performed by Microsoft revealed that US users of Hotmail can amount as much as 200 unread emails across a number of accounts, with 70% of participants suspecting that important messages get lost in all the clutter.
With Sweep, customers can select a single message and have all email from that sender be moved to a specific directory or deleted. Future emails from certain sources can also be blocked to prevent clutter.