ENGLEWOOD, CO – The home of yet another online survey and shopping site, Lockerz, owned by the Liberty Media Corporation. But what sets this site apart from the others is its stupefying capability to become very popular very fast. Aimed at the teenage/young adult market, its known function is to dispense points, or PTZ, to members for taking part in a once-a-day single question survey, which can be redeemed for a large quantity of prizes.
OR SO IT APPEARS.
I discovered the site a week previously, and decided to give it a shot. It wasn’t even a month old, but had captivated the attention of over three hundred thousand registered members, reliably answering the survey question every day in the pretense of acquiring more PTZ. I was amused to find that in order to register, you had to be invited by another member first. The motivation for a member to do so would be to earn more PTZ, simply for inviting people. Once registered, it treated me to a small minigame that netted a small amount of PTZ to start out with, and opened the rest of the site.
Fairly straightforward, but here’s the interesting bit. I went to the “Redeem” section of the site to check out some of the rewards. Suffice to say, they were impressive, ranging from wallpapers to Iphone skins, from laptops to video games, from consoles to a Piaggio Fly 150! However, besides the downloadable content and the various charities, NOTHING was available. “MORE SOON,” it promises, which strikes me as odd. However, people have reported actually getting their items, so many will attest it’s no sham. It makes me wonder, though, where does the site get the income to pay for these prizes? Not from advertising, there is not an ad to be seen anywhere. This could explain, though, the lack in restocking prizes. Just what is the site’s aim, its purpose, its method of turning a profit for the company? They spend money on prizes, which are shipped free once the PTZ are bartered. They spend even more money on advertising, but where is the income?
Interestingly enough, while they have managed to garner some attention for themselves, they have not yet been recognized by any reputable media outlets. A result of this was the site article’s deletion from Wikipedia due to it being a suspected referral scheme, citing that “It may have the illusion of "notability" to random passers-by because links to it are spammed out ad nausem, but that’s not WIKIPEDIA notability.”
I guess we’ll see in the future if it ever becomes notable, for good or for bad.
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