Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
LOS ANGELES — A marketing ploy by a startup baby naming social media site poses the question: would you let strangers on the Internet pick your baby's name?
Baby Ballot, a site that allows expecting parents to make a poll for their loved ones to vote on, hired actress Natasha Lloyd to pose as an expectant mother willing to let strangers on the Internet name her baby in exchange for a $5,000 prize from the site
Baby Ballot said they chose Natasha "Hill," the pseudonym for Lloyd, because of her answer to their contest question, asking what she would do with the money. They said she was going to pay off credit card debt and start a college fund for the baby. Names submitted by the site's advertisers (no product names, Baby Ballot co-founder said) and trending names were said to make up those on the ballot.
"We came up with the idea for the contest and we knew it would be controversial," said the site's co-founder, Lacey Moler to the LAist. "But we're a start-up and we wanted to control the situation."
#poll
According to the Huffington Post, Baby Ballot only hired Lloyd after receiving zero applications for the contest.
Though the contest and voting was a marketing ploy, it got people talking about the weight which people put into names, and whether or not people besides the parents should have a place in the naming of a child, and giving children strange names.
Last year, names like Burger, Cajun, Mango, Starlit and Samanda appeared on the list of America's top unusual names.
