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Yahoo Considers Offering Prizes to Search Users
Bemmu writes "According to the San Francisco Chronicle: 'Yahoo Inc. is considering offering free music downloads, discounts on DVD rentals and frequent-flier miles to users who make the Web site their primary search engine.'" More from the article: "Offering rewards to search engine users isn't new. During the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, a number of companies including AllAdvantage.com and MyPoints.com gave cash, prizes and loyalty points to users, although many of the companies eventually went out of business or were sold at fire sale prices. That's not to say the model never works. One exception is iWon.com, a Web portal that offers cash prizes for using the site. After some success during the boom, iWon is now owned by Ask Jeeves and its parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp. " Update: 02/12 21:07 GMT by Z : Headline changed for accuracy.
Why do the editors of Slashdot feel the need to spin stories so that the headlines read like it's actually news? Someone mentioned this to the press and suddenly it's headlines that they're doing it. Please don't fall victim to the ways of other news providers, that's why I read Slashdot because it's not using shock reporting to get my attention.
Yahoo wants this. You're a tool if you print it like this.
"Stay tuned for a very special local Fox affiliate news report about how just going to school can be harmful for your children. They may already be dead! Find out how at nine."
My work here is dung.
http://www.blingo.com/ Lots of my friends and people who I've heard from have won from Blingo. No spyware, not too many adds. Just a google search with a win every so often. Seems to work for them.
who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it (to paraphrase). Another time honored marketing ploy to seduce/coerce personal information from customers. Dupe!
It is a wonderful search engine. It is based on Google for normal search but you can add extra panels and having it use diffferent vehichles.
Doing a Wikipedia search concurrently with a general search is in my oppinion the best of both worlds.
Help fight continental drift.
Searching for online rewards
Yahoo is considering free offers, discounts and rewards to users of its search engine. Here are some of the possible incentives listed in a recent survey of Yahoo's customers:
Five free music downloads per month
Donations to charity (of users' choice)
Unlimited Yahoo mail storage (instead of 1 GB)
Discounted personals (one free month and $19.95 per month thereafter, instead of $24.95)
Frequent-flier miles (250 per month)
Source: Chronicle research
And support Yahoo turning over people to the authorities? No thanks!
After you search for any keywords on the DHS watchlist.
I found iWon to actually be useful and relevant for a brief period of time during the boom. Like just about every other portal and search which died off, they seemed to give in to greed and sell top placements, making it worthless.
I would attribute the brief success of iWon to it functioning well, rather than the gimmicks.
This got me thinking -- Maybe instead of offering prizes (which one needs to win), why not offer frequent-searcher credits?
So if you searched while logged in (then Yahoo! doesn't even need forever-cookie to track a user's activity), you will accumulate some credits and when you have reached certain threshold, you can exchange for things that you actually want.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
There's a difference between offering (as the headline implies) and considering offering as the article states. For all we know this could be the handiwork of some marketing droid who just ran a poll for a Powerpoint presentation.
Yahoo is also offering Chinese dinners as a prize. Dunno why.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
This would be an excellent market strategy if you made little profit in the first place. However, for an already successful company like google, this would only cut into their revenue. I see this only as a desperate attempt by yahoo to save their market share.
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
...after you search for 'mohammed cartoon bomb'.
If people don't want to goto your site by will...then force them !!
I remember the last time I bought a certain brand of coffee, my decision to pick up the particular brand was influenced by the free ceramic mug that came with it. There was a equally better coffee brand sitting besides this one but I chose the one with the free gift.
This is one of the oldest tricks in the marketing field. The companies doing business are clever in taking advantage of this human weakness. That is exactly what is happening in the internet arena too. And yahoo is leading the way in pulling potential search users in using their search engine by luring them with freebies.
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If the search activity was stored on the user's computer, wouldn't it be relatively easy to alter it? There sure is a lot of incenive.
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
but that headline seems to imply that prizes are being offered to people willing to search Yahoo users. How thorough of a search do I have to perform, and do they have a suggested list of users? Will a basic pat-down and frisk be enough, or do I have to get a flashlight and gloves? Inquiring minds want to know.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
frisk me - i've got a prize for ya
There is equal. There is better. There is no equally better.
qz
Mypoints.com *still* offers awards to folks that read their advertising emails. If I would just get off my butt more often and slog through what they send me, I could already have my fourth $10 restaurant gift certificate.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Not worth it. Let them track someone else. Then the next time the subpoena wagon rolls through town they can hang them, not me.
qz
If the search prize giving algorithm isn't too draconian, we might as well use an extension to search google and yahoo at the same time and use google's search while getting money from yahoo.
Wow, if I use Yahoo! I might get free Air Miles? What happened to what i was looking for.. A good e-mail account or search results?
When I search for some keywords, I'm not after free music (unless the keywords are "free" and "music" of course), I'm after relevant search results. Unless Yahoo can feed me those (and they can't at the moment) no amount of free music will make them a usable search engine.
Negative points are given, not only to change the karma of registered users, but to filter the comments. Some readers will only read comments of +3 or higher for example, and by marking 'first' posts as first posts, people who don't want to see them, don't have to. With regards to the yahoo thing, I can't really see them attracting many users if they do go through with this. I only ever used Yahoo! search when I was logged into my mail account and it was easier than changing to google. If I was on any other webpage, I used google. Since swapping to Gmail, I no longer use Yahoo! and the possibility of getting rewarded really doesn't tempt me to search with them. (Especially since personalised google came along).
http://news.com.com/2061-10811_3-6037090.html
The C|Net article includes a screenshot showing what incentives Yahoo! is considering offering, as well as this text:
Some of these things could be interesting: e.g., like the airline miles. Some of them are a bit lame because they are things that Google already offers for free: e.g., like POP3/SMTP for mail. I just wonder exactly what they mean by "most" and the technical impossibility of ensuring "most" (which would be relative to rival engines) instead of "at least n number of searches".
(more of my thoughts on this are posted here)
I've never tried Blingo until I saw the GP post. After having tried it, I'm impressed by the business concept. All that they do is show some Google AdSense advertisements above and below the regular Google search results -- Google has a program specifically for co-branded searches. To you, the end user, you still get Google "quality" results, although, the sponsored links are somewhat more prominent that on Google.com. Plus, you get an (admittedly small) chance of winning a prize.
I would not be surprised if they earn a couple dollars per thousand searches -- it would be in the ballpark of my experience with AdSense. At that rate, it's quite easy to finance a couple of movie tickets an hour plus a bigger prize like an iPod or PS2 every day.
This makes it more clear to me now. Thank you, content police, for now I understand exactly what that threshold thing that I always have to change when I want to read the funny parts is for. (actually this is a joke; it really does make sense and even sounds like a good idea. BTW, please mod me down, and the parent up, as his comment was insightful, and mine is, once again, mostly ignorant rambling)
(In the interest of not completely wasting the time of whoever bothers to read this)
...And as far as the yahoo thing goes, I've never really used yahoo before, but from what I hear about it, it's not entirely bad, maybe not as comprehensive as google, but surely not the evil empire. I agree that when I use a search engine, I do want to spend as little time doing it as possible, but for the people who don't mind spending a few extra minutes weeding through unnecessary adcrap, or (god forbid) the folks who are actually interested in being marketed at, the offer of ten bucks off a dinner for two might be a good thing. Plenty of people like dinner for two, and many of those people like ten bucks off. Ten bucks off would be nice, especially if I wasn't really making much of a sacrifice for it (how big is the difference, really, for people who don't live at their computers; ie: the average user?)
If Yahoo is successful, maybe Google will consider this...
Since Verizon is trying to get Google to pay for use of their network (I don't agree with this happening, but for the sake of the argument keep reading), maybe they could consider becoming partners and Google could offer a free month of DSL through Verizon as one of the incentives...which could possibly bring more Google users to Verizon as customers...
If this happens, I better get credit for the idea.
Ramen
Did Yahoo! just jump the shark?
Mostly, I've just found it to be a good way to pick up a couple free iTunes gift certificates :)
I think that the model of accumulating "points" just ends up being more of a pain than it's worth.
Photography, technology, and my dog Scout - http://mattstratton.com
Users of certain sites have been falling for such ploys for years. I remember five years ago, an ex-coworker of mine used to keep a certain search page as his home page, and he would visit the page at least ten times dirung the workday, and each time he'd sit there and refresh the page about fifty times, in hopes of being granted one of these prizes. In a typical workweek, that would have given him 2500 chances per week. He did this everyday for the two years during which I worked with him: about 260000 times. And, surprise: he never won a thing. But he gave that site plenty of hits in the process.
Sadly enough, I guarantee that, despite some opinions, some people will fall for this.
I explained that I used Google b/c I trust Google, and I don't trust Yahoo. But now that they may bribe me to use their service, I may change my mind. Nothing inspires trust like a kickback.
When you have to pay people to use your free product, you have a serious marketing problem.
If I am using a search engine, I am not interested in finding what I am looking for! If I want to waste my time trying to win prizes, I will buy a scratchy ticket.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, as interesting as that would be, I still can't see it being a viable option, being that I have Verizon for my cell phone and the service I get is spotty, at best. Add to that the fact that Verizon charges you extra to use the mobile Web from your phone, and it also eats into your minutes? I'm sorry, but I can't see this working as anything more than another marketing gimmick.
Now, if they were to offer free pr0n or more towers... either or...
BTW, this is Dawg, I'm just too lazy right now to log in and post
Another offer to get crap I'll never use and end up giving away just to be free of having to maintain it!
Consumerism....the evil that enslaves you.
Not a geek just looking for one.
P.
Sign up for Yahoo "total search monitoring" now and you may win a free trip to a slave labor camp, err, "resort", of your government's choice!
Just ask Li Zhi and Shi Tao, who thought they were anonymous when they made pro-democracy forum posts! Both are now rotting away in prison, uh we mean enjoying their free vacations at the expense of the Chinese government - since Yahoo turned their information over to the Chinese authorities.
Tao won a ten year trip, and Zhi got eight glorious years of FREE (re)EDUCATION!
http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org/?p=152