Trial and Error

Just a few more hours to vote, folks! The polls close at 2 p.m. today. Make sure your voice is heard in this election season. Plus, we at the New Media Minute-TVWeek.com Tournament for the Hottest Male Web Host promise not to drag this race out ad nauseam.

The poll will shut down promptly at 2 p.m. PDT this afternoon and the winner will be officially announced on Wednesday, May 14, along with the complete list and order of runner-ups. We will also reveal our special prize and the responsibilities of the sexiest male Web host for the year of his reign.

Thank you all for your support!

Today is the last full day of voting. C’mon boys! What will you do to represent? How will you get the fans to turn it on for you and send you to victory in the tournament? Now is the time to pull out all the stops and put your best tactics into play.

And now that you’ve voted, go watch our video report.

OK, so this Somerville dude. He is mega-determined to win the New Media Minute-TVWeek.com Tournament for the Hottest Male Web Host. Check out this video he just shot this afternoon taking his case to the streets of New York.

Will all you other contestants do the same?

So what everyone really wants to know these days is who the heck is Michael Somerville?

Because right now he is one of the top two contenders for the Hottest Male Web Host. And nobody seems to know him. Yet enough people seem to know him that he’s often leading in the votes, jockeying back and forth with Captain Speedo—aka David Price of “The Middle Show”—and Leo Laporte.

So who is this dark horse?

Well, you might not yet know him from his online persona. But I bet some of the ladies who read my blog will know him from his other life. He's Jake from Glamour magazine! You know … “Ask Jake,” the guy who gives you the guy’s perspective on relationships.

And that’s sort of what he does in his new show “Love, Somerville.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek series on relationships and it can be quite funny at times. Just check out this recent episode, especially when he breaks up with his girlfriend via a puppy greeting card.

So you want to be crowned the Web’s sexiest male host?

I’ve got one for you on how to win: Twitter.

Twitter, the online messaging service, is quite possibly the most powerful social marketing tool.

Leo Laporte, the host of This Week in Tech, is leading in our polls by a commanding margin. His good looks and charming personality notwithstanding, he’s also got Twitter in his favor. When you use Twitter, you post short updates on the service and those updates are read by your followers. People sign up to follow you and over time, if your Tweets are good and you’re enough of an online draw, you can amass a decent following. Leo Laporte has done just that.

He is ranked as the Twitter user with the second most followers. More than 28,000 people follow him and receive his short Twitter updates. So when he Twitters about the New Media Minute-TVWeek.com Tournament for the Hottest Male Web Host (as he did yesterday, God bless him), many of those followers came running to the polls.

He is second in followers only to Barack Obama, who has about 100 more. The third most followed is Kevin Rose, host of “Diggnation” and also a contender in our poll. He has 25,000 followers, but has yet to post a Tweet urging fans to vote for him.

Here is the list of top Twitter-ers: http://www.twitterholic.com/

Oh, and you can always follow me too: www.twitter.com/DaisyWhitney

And then there were nine.

After a heated week of voting in the first round of the New Media Minute-TVWeek.com Tournament for the Hottest Male Web Host, we find ourselves staring at the finish line in the final round. And it’s Winner Takes All. Mano a mano. Sudden Death.

That’s right. Eight guys made it out unscathed from the initial pack of 16 and we added a wild-card name to the final round, due to audience demand.

And now there will be no more brackets, no more whittling the boys down. Nope. It’s just a war of attrition, a battle 'til the end.

The male Web hosts left standing are: Leo Laporte (This Week in Tech), Gary Vaynerchuk (WineLibraryTV), Jeff MacPherson (Tiki Bar TV), Erik Beck (Indy Mogul), Michael Somerville (Love, Somerville), Kevin Rose (Diggnation), Martin Sargent (Internet Superstar), Chris Leavins (Cute with Chris) and David Price (The Middle Show).

You have until Friday at 2 p.m. Pacific to cast your vote. Go objectify!

The first round of voting in the New Media Minute-TVWeek.com Tournament for the Hottest Male Web Host officially closes today at 2 p.m. PDT. We’ve got a few tight races, so every vote counts.

Can Adam Roberts upset Gary Vaynerchuk? Will Chris Leavins beat Philip DeFranco? Is Merlin Mann staging a comeback over Leo Laporte? You have only a few hours left to weigh in on these and other burning questions.

Eight initial winners will move on to the final round, along with one wild-card pick. Those nine will go up against each other in a winner-take-all round that will run Monday through Friday of next week.

Then, the winner will be crowned.

Adam Roberts is rocking the vote. That’s right. The Food Network Web host and hottie-in-contention has rallied the troops.

After this post on his blog, Adam went from about 25% of the votes in his matchup with WineLibraryTV’s Gary Vaynerchuk to 47% of the votes in the New Media Minute-TVWeek.com Tournament for the Hottest Male Web Host.

In fact, this particular pairing has generated the most votes so far in the contest. (I’ll announce vote totals on Monday).

I wonder if Adam can pull it off and upset the king of Web marketing.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, fair voters around the nation, let’s meet our contestants.

First up, we have Jeff Macpherson, star and creator of one of the first podcasts ever, “Tiki Bar TV,” going up against Tom Merritt, the host and resident tech geek of CNET TV’s “Buzz Out Loud.”

Next, average-Joe wine guy and social media sommelier Gary Vaynerchuk squares off against the square but adorable Adam Roberts, star of FoodNetwork.com’s “The Amateur Gourmet.”

Then there’s “Internet Superstar’s” Martin Sargent, who takes viewers through the wildest Web sites and Web stars around, duking it out with Josh Huck of “Searchin’ USA” as he checks out interesting searches on the Web.

After that, you’ll find the two hosts of “Diggnation” battling each other. “Diggnation” is one of the granddaddies of Web shows and features Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose sitting on a couch, drinking beer and reviewing the week’s most “dugg” stories.

Next comes Michael Somerville, Glamour magazine’s former “Ask Jake,” fighting against “DadLabs” co-star Troy Lanier. Somerville’s “Love, Somerville” Web show features relationship advice, while Lanier dispenses child-rearing tips for new dads on his show.

Then there are the tech gurus, Leo LaPorte and Merlin Mann. LaPorte is one of the first podcasters ever and the creator of the popular “TWiT” audio podcasts; he also fronts several video shows. Mann is on “The Merlin Show” and “MacBreak.”

We also have Chris Leavins of the show “Cute With Chris” a show about cute kittens and puppies. Awww. He’s clashing with “Philip DeFranco,” the Web’s current incarnation of Ze Frank and the star of his own “The Philip DeFranco Show,” an edgy look at pop culture.

Finally, “Indy Mogul’s” Erik Beck faces “Green House TV’s” Eric Gunnar Rochow, in a skirmish that pits the MacGyver of special effects against the male Martha Stewart, but with a green consciousness.

Due to the supreme level of audience demand, I have opened a wild-card slot in the New Media Minute-TVWeek Tournament for the Hottest Male Web Host.

That’s right, folks. ONE wild-card slot for a write-in candidate.

To refresh you on how the rules work, we currently have 16 contestants divided into eight pairings of head-to-head battles in this first round. By Friday, the eight winners will move on to the second round. We will add one more contestant in the wild-card slot to make nine in the final round.

So far, David Price of Black20 is leading for the wild-card spot. His benefactors at Black20 submitted his name as a write-in candidate on Monday morning. I promptly responded that if I received at least 25 comments right here on this blog that I would strongly consider him as a write-in/wild-card candidate. And you know what? Those scrappy dudes at Black20 posted a note in their forum, rallied the troops and provided the aforementioned 25 comments.

After I watched this video of David Price in his Speedo, I can see why he would qualify. (And remember, folks, I am an expert on objectifying male Web hosts.)

But in the interest of fairness, we’ll need to open this wild-card slot to the whole wide world. So here are the rules. The write-in candidate with the most comments on his behalf on this blog post will be added to the final round of voting.

The other candidates are listed below, so please keep voting. And remember, I’m not the only one doing this. Here’s a contest for sexiest weather girls.