Valley native’s Web page tracks Miss World voting

the vindicator

An Internet company created by a Liberty native is powering the online vote for the 2008 Miss World Pageant.

Barak Rabinowitz is the creator of Amuso.com, a new media site that is bringing the game-show craze from television to the Web. Amuso is hosting the vote for “The People’s Choice” segment of the official Miss World pageant. For the first time, anyone in the world can vote for Miss World online and visit Amuso.com for hundreds of other contests.

The Miss World Pageant, not to be confused with the Miss Universe Pageant, will be broadcast at 5 p.m. Sunday on the E! Network. The pageant has one of the largest global television audiences.

Besides running the Miss World portal, Amuso’s primary product is a platform for online contests that allows users to create their own versions of “American Idol,” “Next Top Model” or whatever else they can think of, each with cash prizes. To participate in a contest, users are charged $1 for each photograph or video submitted. The type of file depends on the contest; a beauty pageant may ask for images, while a singing contest would ask for video footage.

The Amuso platform allows the contest administrator to control how voting proceeds (for example, photos can be paired off as voters choose which one they like better, or they can be presented individually with a 10-point scale). The Amuso video player also includes integrated thumbs up/down voting.

Rabinowitz is the son of Dr. Zeev Rabinowitz of Liberty and the late Pnina Rabinowitz. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and has a master’s degree from Harvard University. He attended E.J. Blott Elementary and W.S. Guy Middle schools in Liberty, and is a 1996 graduate of Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio.

Rabinowitz launched the 9/11 United Services Group, a consortium of the largest nonprofit groups in the United States established to coordinate the relief efforts after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.