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Jun. 13th, 2005 @ 10:10 am Drama llamas
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Last week had too much drama from way too many random directions. And to think that I upgraded myself to one of those fancy permenant accounts. I guess this is what's to be expected since LJ is the home of drama. Let's hope that this week is better... At the very least, the possibility of winning free stuff shouldn't generate any drama:

Blingo

It's a front end for google, where you can occasionally get random prizes like movie tickets(I've gotten 2 myself), Blockbuster.com subscriptions, or iPods.
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Drama!
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From:dilly
Date:June 13th, 2005 03:44 pm (UTC)
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What, you have drama? I thought that your online existance has been pretty calm, I guess things have been happening between updates(!) Anyway, hope you're doing better now! I had some drama too, and decided to go on LJ-hiatus for a little while~ But I'm still a happy lurker. :o)
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From:bogosort
Date:June 13th, 2005 09:04 pm (UTC)
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Thankfully not so much drama of my own, just many bits of drama scattered throughout my various groups of friends. But drama for my friends often means unpleasantness for me which is sad.

Hopefully your own drama has resolved itself by now(though if you're a happy lurker, that's a good sign). We should talk sometime to catch up, since I don't get anymore exciting updates now that you're on hiatus now.
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From:dwchang
Date:June 13th, 2005 04:49 pm (UTC)
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What is the catch for this Blingo? There has to be a catch.
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From:ashyukun
Date:June 13th, 2005 07:56 pm (UTC)
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The promotion is only running this month- I'd imagine it's a calculated expenditure to try and attract as many people as possible initially with the figuring that they'll keep using the engine and they'll make up the cost of the prizes (something like a 'value' of $20k, meaning they probably paid about 2/3 or less of that out) in ad revenue in the future. It's essentially an advertising expense I'd say...
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From:bogosort
Date:June 13th, 2005 09:16 pm (UTC)
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As far as I can tell, this is their business model, to be unobtrusive like google, and to keep people hooked with the potential of winning prizes for doing web searches. They will keep said prizes around, especially with the tagline: "Blingo is a search engine with a twist. Each search on Blingo is also a chance to win a prize." But comparing it to google ads I think they are trying to bank on their text ads being inline with the search results. As an ad expense, it's an excellent way to generate initial publicity for them.
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From:bogosort
Date:June 13th, 2005 09:07 pm (UTC)
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Their business model is that they put in their own advertisements on top of normal google searches. As far as I can tell, I think they also modify the google searches, so you miss out on some links that google might otherwise give(though most of those that I've noticed missing are from things like forum posts). I'm sure they do more tracking of the users that google does(especially since they can track people across more than one computer) and can thus deliver better targetted ads.