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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.
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.
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.