Gigatown Masterton bumped from top

Masterton has slipped dramatically to sixth place in Chorus' Gigatown competition.

It has lost its second place spot in the social media battle after Dunedin gained hundreds of thousands of points in a recent sub-competition.

The Otago town gained the points in an Instagram video competition taking it from 11th to second place, behind Wanaka, which is still at the top of the leaderboard.

Towns won 1000 points for each video and the points were not subject to the usual population-adjusted points allocation.

Gigatown Dunedin campaign organiser Josh Jenkins told the Otago Daily Times almost 1000 videos were posted, more than half of them by two people involved in running Dunedin's campaign.

Queenstown, Nelson and Timaru also gained enough points to overtake Masterton.

Gigatown Masterton project leader, John Hart, said the new ranking was caused by a combination of technology limitations, unlimited points and the fact the points weren't adjusted by population size. "Obviously it's a little bit disappointing but we have been here before, I'm sure we can get back up."

He said Masterton was at a disadvantage as there was a smaller pool of people with smartphones, which are needed to be able to take Instagram video.

He said he even had to borrow a smartphone as his smartphone was too old and its version of Instagram didn't have video.

Mr Hart said while being active on social media was important, people needed to take part in the sub-competitions to get Masterton back up to the top.

"Chorus have said there are a number of competitions to go.

"Really people just need to do more of the same, getting people to sign up and taking part in the competitions."

There were still months to go in the competition, he said.

"It's a blip but it's not the end of the world."

The first stage of the competition ends in September, after which the top five towns will battle it out.

The winning town gets access to one gigabit per second internet and a $200,000 development fund to support entrepreneurs and innovators taking new services using the gigabit fibre to market.

Mr Hart said he has just started a regular radio programme on Arrow FM 92.7 for people to find out more about the competition and how to take part.

Listen live 8.30am Wednesdays and 8.30pm Sundays, or listen to show podcasts on www.arrowfm.co.nz.