On Tuesday, the team behind Google Glass began handing out virtual golden tickets. Folks who took part in the #IfIHadGlass application process won the opportunity to purchase Google's futuristic cyber-headgear for $1,500. By Wednesday, the search engine giant realized that some of the applicants didn't exactly follow the rules — to say the least — and revoked their invitations.
To gain admission to the Glass Explorer program, an elite group which will have the opportunity to purchase Glass before everyone else, individuals "applied" by posting about what they would do if they had the gadget. The posts had to start with the #IfIHadGlass hashtag, be publicly visible on Google+ or Twitter, not exceed 50 words in length, and meet some other requirements.
Google stipulated that entries should definitely not "be derogatory, offensive, threatening, defamatory, disparaging, libelous or contain any content that is inappropriate, indecent, sexual, profane, indecent, tortuous, slanderous, discriminatory in any way, or that promotes hatred or harm against any group or person, or otherwise does not comply with the theme and spirit of #ifihadglass."
So imagine how surprised some were to see that Google's official @ProjectGlass Twitter account informed a young woman who tweeted "#IfIHadGlass, I'd throw it at your face" that she'd been selected to join the Glass Explorers program.
Whoops!
"[I]t’s become clear that a few applications that don’t comply with our terms have slipped through the cracks, and we’re going to have to disqualify applications like these," a post on the Project Glass Google+ page explained on Wednesday evening.
So far, only two invitations have been revoked publicly, the one to the young woman who'd rather throw Glass than wear it and another who tweeted that she'd use Glass to cut a ... rude word which I can't repeat here. "Unfortunately your application didn't comply with our terms, and has been disqualified," the Project Glass team plainly tweeted to those two individuals. "We’re sorry for the confusion."
We are curious whether Google plans on revoking any other invitations, such as the one that went out to a Twitter user who merely tweeted the #IfIHadGlass hashtag and nothing else.
We have reached out to Google for more information on whatever sort of mixup allowed applications like this to have "slipped through." We suspect that blame will be placed on the "panel of independent content moderators" who were tasked with reviewing applications.
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