Microsoft re-brands Bing Rewards and adds Edge and the Store to it

[suicidalfranco]

 

If you lived in the US, since 2010 you could take advantage of MS's Bing Rewards program to make a quick buck by simply using Bing and doing so for at least 30 hours/month to claim your reward, then last year it added MSN to the experience and as of this week MS has re-branded the initiative to Microsoft Rewards and users will receive points for using the Edge browser, the Windows/MS Store and Bing as your default search engine is a requirement. The points can the be traded for vouchers or credit for Starbuck, Amazon, MS stuff and discounts on MS products.

Other changes include tier levels (from member, silver and gold to tier 1 and tier 2) and 1 bing credit = 10 MS points. 

Quote

Users of Edge who sign up to Microsoft Rewards, which is currently US-only, are then awarded points simply for using the browser. Microsoft actively monitors whether you’re using Edge for up to 30 hours a month. It tracks mouse movements and other signs that you’re not trying to game the system, and you must also have Bing set as your default search engine.

Currently Bing represents less than 5% of the marketshare and Edge sits below 6% among the other less popular browsers. 

 

source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/19/microsoft-windows-10-browser-edge-pay-users-bing

[arnavvr]

How much money does this give you per month?

[desertcomputer]

9 minutes ago, arnavvr said:

How much money does this give you per month?

That the question, the right amount anyone can switch to edge

[GoodBytes]

20 minutes ago, arnavvr said:

How much money does this give you per month?

From what I read. You get 1 credit for every 2 searches you perform with a daily limit of 15 credits when you use Bing (there might be other things with IE/Edge and maybe now Cortana). You have different levels as well, Member, Silver and Gold. So, the more use the service the better the rewards gets over time. You get nice pre-paid gift cards like a couple dollars gift-cards from Amazon, StarBucks free coffees and more.

 

Apparently, $5 gift cards can be redeemed for 525 credits (you only need to reach 475 credit to get it if you are "Gold" status)

For 300 credit you can get a month free of Hulu, Netflix, or another service

Plus, to sweat the deal more, Microsoft does big-prize sweepstakes/giveaways to lucky winners, like Lumia phones (hey it's free, don't complain.. you can sale it, or discover something new), XBox console, games, $500 gift cards form some big store like Target or Walmart or Amazon, and so on.

 

You can also use the credits as donations too. If you want to help support someone, you send some of your credit points.

 

While the number of credits needed might seem to be a lot, you probably reach your 15 credit limit per say easily. So, basically, you can get 5$ of Amazon, say in about a month.

 

So, it is pretty cool thing. I mean it isn't the best deal in the world, but it is better than nothing, especially now that Bing is far better than before., hwere you can actually find most things you are looking for. Sadly, it is US only.

[themctipers]

5 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Sadly, it is US only.

yus! i can finally "save up" and get games le-

US only

fuck

[Shoob]

Instead of making their browser usable and competitive, they want to increase the market share by offering rewards.

I don't see power users switching to Edge anytime soon.

[nobelharvards]

Microsoft logic: If we can't make our search engine better than Google, lets bribe the users instead! 1 cent at a time!

 

If it is anything like any other rewards program, it will take forever to get any substantial amount of points.

 

Anyone who is heavily involved in productivity (i.e. time=money) will lose a lot of it by using Bing. I'll bet my left testicle the amount of points earnt isn't anywhere near the amount of time lost via irrelevant results.

 

There are just times when Bing does not return the same relevant results as Google.

 

This will not work long term.

[ScratchCat]

Evil Plan to make money off Microsoft:

1. Steal Linus' 44 core server.

2. Load up loads of Windows 10 VMs

3. Create script to simulate mouse movements and clicks.

4. Wait for money to accumulate 

[Okjoek]

What are the advantages Google has over these other search engines? I use Google only because it's basically tied to my Youtube account and Gmail.

[GoodBytes]

13 minutes ago, Okjoek said:

What are the advantages Google has over these other search engines? I use Google only because it's basically tied to my Youtube account and Gmail.

Google is widely used... so the learning algorithm provides the best results. If you search anything on Bing that is popular, you'll see you'll get great results, but anything that is widely used, you won't. You'll still find what you are looking for, but it won't be on page 1.

[Trik'Stari]

[atrash]

I cant imagine the amount of credits I could've received from using Bing exclusively for the past 4-5 years. Sucks that it's US only.. 

[Sauron]

Given how little they pay, no thank you. I might run a bot in a virtual machine that does something on bing every 30 minutes or so. Maybe have it search for dank memes.

[samcool55]

US only, lol.

That will only increase searches marginally, if they want to compete with google they will need to do better than that.

[suicidalfranco]

isn't this thread necro?

[DarkBlade2117]

I'll do a quick 30 random ass searches a day on edge and go back to Firefox and Google lmao

[RagnarokDel]

On 21/08/2016 at 3:46 AM, Pandalf said:

Instead of making their browser usable and competitive, they want to increase the market share by offering rewards.

I don't see power users switching to Edge anytime soon.

I like edge more then chrome lately. If it had proper addon support I wouldnt even use chrome anymore.

[eyecantseeover24fps]

TFW your product is so bad you literally have to pay people to use it.