At the risk of sharing some self-serving factoids, I nonetheless found the results of uTest 's social networking Bug Battle interesting. In all, 1,119 testers (using uTest tools) from 64 countries around the world competed in the quarterly contest to find bugs in the three top social networking platforms -- Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

 Over the course of a week in February, a total of 718 bugs were found. The uTest community classified 84 of those bugs as "showstoppers," which are defined as flaws in need of immediate attention. The final Bug Battle results included:

• 416 testers evaluated Facebook and identified 243 bugs, including 14.40 percent that were classified as showstoppers.
• 399 testers evaluated LinkedIn and identified 250 bugs, including 9.78 percent that were classified as showstoppers.
• 304 testers evaluated MySpace and identified 225 bugs, including 10.80 percent that were classified as showstoppers.

The overall winner of the uTest Bug Battle -- and recipient of $1,000 in prize money -- was Ranchhod Prajapati of India, who reported the most valuable bugs and provided the best testing feedback, according to the uTest judges. Other top winners included Evan Dinsmore of Canada who received the Top Novice award and $750, and Supraja Addala Prasad of the U.S. who received the Top USA award and $500.

uTest plans on holding one Bug Battle each quarter, evaluating and comparing different applications or popular Web sites each time. The company will solicit recommendations for future Bug Battle subjects on its Web site.

uTest also conducted a user survey of Bug Battle participants, asking them to compare the usability, quality and overall feature set of Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. Some of the top-line findings include:

• More than 87 percent of respondents rated Facebook as either 'good' or 'very good' in terms of quality.
• 78 percent of the testers gave Facebook high marks for usability.
• LinkedIn ranked first in terms of overall quality, with 45 percent of the total vote.
• Testers with more than 3 years experience overwhelmingly favored LinkedIn for every category.
• The survey showed MySpace to have a loyal user base, with 40 percent of those who tested the site saying they would recommend it to their friends.
• At least 17 percent of all respondents ranked MySpace first in terms of quality, usability and feature sets.
• 17 percent of testers involved in the battle had more than five years of experience in software testing.
• 42 percent of participants had more than three years of software testing experience.