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Yahoo Considers Offering Prizes to Search Users

Posted by Zonk on from the you-get-porn-and-free-music dept.

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.

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Full List of Prizes by MikeSty · · Score: 1, Informative

    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

  2. Re:Blingo! by masterren · · Score: 2, Informative
    I've won a movie ticket from Blingo already. They're able to give stuff away because they add their own text advertisements (about 4 of them) to the top of your search results. From http://www.blingo.com/about:
    How can Blingo afford to give away prizes?

    Just like other popular search engines, we earn money from the sponsored links you see when you do a search. (These links are always clearly identified and separated from search results.) Prizes are simply our way of encouraging people to use Blingo to search the Web.

  3. Re:Blingo! by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 2, Informative

    "You must live in the United States" to win a prize, according to their website.

    --
    If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
  4. Re:Blingo! by TheSpoom · · Score: 3, Informative

    Indeed, and they're certainly quite quiet about it if you don't read their Terms of Service. A friend of mine tried to get me to sign up after he was using it for a while, and I told him a few minutes later that we're both ineligible as we're Canadians. They'll certainly let you sign up and think you can win though...

    --
    It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
    - E. Debs