Microsoft has a built-in incentive program that some pundits — including former MS super-blogger Robert Scoble — believe could be a secret weapon in the battle for search market share against Google, Yahoo and ASK.
The concept of Achievement Points and a Gamerscore has become more popular than Microsoft ever imagined. Building on the time-honored, incentive marketing redemption power of cumulative awatd poin programs like the classic S&H Green Stamps (circa 1896) and frequent-flier miles, the Microsoft Xbox 360 thought it had a brainstorm when it borrowed a page from the past.
The “Achievement Points” were so successful that Microsoft decided to productize the idea. MS mandated that every developer of Xbox 360 games “hide” 1,000 achievement points in every retail game and 200 in every casual game. Players would earn points for certain successes in the game. The more challenging the task, the more points are added to the player’s profile — or Gamerscore — which is visible to anyone who cares to look.
Now imagine if you could earn an achievement for “doing 100 Windows Live searches, or doing a search that has no results for it, or doing a search that’ll return a Microsoft.com page in the #1 spot,” posits Scoble.
Frequent surfer programs have yet to catch any kind of wave. Will a Frequent searcher program make a bigger splash?
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