Blingo Buzz: September 2005

One of the nifty little features in Blingo Friends is the ability to see Blingo Winners near you. Just enter your zip code and you'll see 10 recent Blingo Winners near you plus the total number of winners within 100 miles.

Here's what it looks like for Philadelphia:

Wow. 934 winners within 100 miles of Philadelphia.

To see for yourself just change the zipcode on your My Friends page (Join Blingo Friends here if you're not a member).

From a two-time Blingo winner:

You may remember that I had won a movie ticket from Blingo, which promptly got here within 3 weeks. Today I’ve won my second prize, a $25 Visa Gift Card.

See the rest of the post, including the winning screenshot here.

For those of you who've won a movie ticket (or if you'd just like to know if you can use Blingo Movie Tickets near you) we've added a theater locator to the site. Check it out here.

Shawn, a recent Blingo winner, made this cool little desktop widget for Blingo and posted it to his blog:

He's also got a nice photo of a pair of movie tickets on Flickr:

Thanks Shawn.

To prove Blingo works, this winner posted a picture of his prize. From his site:

Wednesday, September 7, 2005
Blingo delivers my two prize tickets as promised:

See the full post here.

From Robyn, an iPod Shuffle winner from Collinsville, OK:

When I won an Apple iPOD a few weeks ago, I elected to take the $100 Visa gift card instead. My daughter's birthday party is today, and I thought about how much that card would come in handy.

There are so many men, women, and children who will never celebrate another birthday, or relative's birthdays because of Hurrican Katrina.

This morning I donated the money on my check card to Habitat for Humanity to help aid in rebuilding efforts.

Thank you Blingo.

Starting right now, we're replacing the iPod Mini with the new iPod Nano. If you haven't seen it yet, here it is.

It may be the coolest iPod yet.

From Tamela, an iPod Shuffle winner from Covington, KY:

My Blingo Tale
I must confess, when I first received the email invitation from my niece to join (Blingo Friends), I figured there was some hidden catch, but I still downloaded the toolbar, and started using Blingo to search. Lo and behold, before a month was out, I won the choice of an iPod or $100 Visa gift card! I couldn't believe it! And my niece won too! She had signed up under her friend, figured it was too good to be true, and never downloaded the toolbar. Imagine how surprised she was to learn she won just because I used it and won! Now she uses it for all of her searches! I figured that when I went to claim the prize, I would be asked for money/credit card info for that notorious 'shipping' fee. Not so! I confirmed my email address and home address, and that was it! I chose the $100 gift card for my up and coming vacation. Thank you Blingo for coming through with your promises! I have spread the word!

Congrats, Tamela.

Another happy winner:

Yay! Drew won an iPod Shuffle from Blingo this morning… and you know what that means? I win one too!!!!! Yippee. I chose the $100 VISA Giftcard instead because I’d rather have the money and Brad has a Shuffle already. It should be here in less than 8 weeks so when it arrives I’ll take pictures and post them on my site :) . I’ll take some screen shots when I get home tonight if you guys don’t believe me ;) Until then, keep the dream alive and search your little hearts out on Blingo!!

See the blog here.

Many people ask "How can Blingo give away prizes?" This blogger provides a simple and accurate explanation:

Blingo operates based on advertising, and by offering incentives, they increase the traffic to their site. More traffic means more money, which makes Blingo happy. Random prizes, and the fact that Blingo is powered by Google makes users happy. Google is happy because they get a cut of the profit. Everyone is happy :-)

There's also a nifty little Firefox add-on and a few comments from recent winners. See the post here.

Nice blog post from a previously skeptical winner:

I previously expressed my disbelief that Blingo actually worked. I was surprised that I won my second day of searching. I’m telling you, after winning multiple prizes, Blingo is for real, so please don’t hesitate on taking an invitation from a friend.

There's more -- he also won an iPod Shuffle. Read the rest here.

Thanks for supporting Blingo. We're pleased to say that we're growing. That means we win and you win. We get to run a fun website and you get even more prizes. This month we've doubled the number of big prizes, like iPods and PSPs, and added iTunes to the mix. Every movie ticket now comes with the option to choose a $10 iTunes gift certificate.

Good luck,

The Blingo Team