Desperate Microsoft Trying to Boost Search Volume
While reading the business news on NYTimes today I noticed an appealing ad for an anagram game at Microsoft’s new club.live.com offering. After clicking over and playing their little game, I realized that they are trying to artificially boost their search volume. Most of the games are somewhat intellectual and requires some searching to come up with answers, this is fine and all, but the game Chicktionary fires off a search for every word attempt. This and the fact that they are awarding ‘points’ for the play seems to point at a desperate grab by MS to increase their daily search volume. The implied value of their points is rather high, you can get a Xbox 360 game machine for 35,000 points. Seems to peg 100 points at over $1. Games award between 10 to 20 points from what I have seen so far.
They must have just launched this because I played 1 game of Clink and actually made their high score list! Seems like the existing scores are all random inserts.
I wonder how long before this hits the news? You can find more at Microsoft is Desperate
June 25th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
It appears that whoever plays will always have a spot in the top 10, no matter their score.
Also, I noticed that in the license agreement, you give them the right to use your user name, first name, and something else (I forget what) on any webpage they choose.
June 25th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Yeah, I guess that they are trying to let you see where you fit on the leader board. Really they should just display the actual number of your standings. Oh well. Check out my newest post and my cool GreaseMonkey scripts to help you play.