Blingo Buzz: July 2005

Blingo joins companies like Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Ford, and AT&T in partnering with Ecount for Visa Gift Cards. See the press release on Ecount's website.

Lots of people ask us this question. One clever user simply sent us this email:

250 millon people live in the United States of America
5.75 billion people don't
Of them 750 million speak English as native speakers

I get it. We'd like to let people from other countries use Blingo, but it's a bit complicated. The issue is that giving away lots of prizes like we do is regulated by laws that vary from state to state and country to country. These laws require us to submit certain information about our prizes and, in some cases, we even have to file bonds guaranteeing that we'll give away the prizes we say we're going to give away. If we expand to other countries we'll have to do even more of this stuff. We're just not ready to deal with the time and expense yet. But someday we will be.

Blingo does not send spam (our regular users know this is true) and we don't want our users sending spam either. If somebody complains to us that you're using spam to sign up Blingo Friends (whether via email, posts on message boards, or other means), then we're going to ask you to stop it. We may disconnect your account too. Spam makes us look bad and it doesn't work very well anyway. Here's our "official" position on spam from our Terms of Service:

Blingo Friends is designed to encourage you to invite people to use Blingo. We encourage you to invite people you know via email, to invite people that visit your website and/or weblog via a Blingo link, or to invite people via other user-friendly and legal practices. We do not encourage you to send email to people you do not know (i.e., spam) or to post your Blingo Friends link in Internet communities where it may be considered a "spam" posting by members of that community. We reserve the right to disqualify and remove any Blingo Friends registrant for engaging in any action or practice that reflects poorly on Blingo or otherwise disparages or devalues Blingo's reputation or goodwill.