I see one (shylion #4052, top row) that could work with a little lovin' but yeah, none of those compare in the slightest. Most of them look like people trolling for prize money -- I'm not familiar with the site but any place there is a promise of cash reward there will be vultures circling the carcass.
NONE of them? I assume that means you've reviewed the more than 4000 that were submitted? I hate to immediately jump on the defensive, but I was a little put-off by the statement. I've used the site for a logo design that I was quite happy with and I've also submitted a few designs that no one was happy with (and for good reason, I'm a terrible designer). So while I have little experience with it, I do think it's a good resource and shouldn't be denounced so quickly.
I've never owned a company and certainly have no real basis for this assumption, but still I assume that I would much rather have thousands of designers at my disposal willing to do iteration after iteration in order win a "prize" and some notoriety to do branding for my company than a single firm who I would feel like I was stuck with after any amount of investment.
Now while I will submit that something of this nature will certainly bring out those "trolling for prize money", I don't agree with the mild implication that the format of the site has nothing more to offer isn't a fair assessment.
Yes, these sites seem to offer a vastly better deal to customers than traditional contracts. But there's a catch: As a consequence, the deal they offer to designers is necessarily so much worse that the only ones participating are those who can't find work elsewhere, ie amateurs.
I think the Gap contest perfectly demonstrates that this isn't the type of task where a "Mechanical Turk" approach works. I've looked at the top 200 rated entries, and there's hardly a passable one among them, let alone anything even remotely inspired.
Most of the ones on the front page aren't the best (after skimming through for a while). I think it is difficult to pick a winner based on voting, but there are definitely some that are better than their original logo.
"This wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing" - what? Isn't that the whole point of this crazy stunt?