Microsoft’s Big Apple Bing Maps Challenge
In an effort to build some awareness of the leading-edge mapping functions recently unveiled for its Bing search engine, Microsoft has announced the “Bing Maps Challenge”, offering Web users a chance to win one of two $100 Visa gift cards by using Bing maps to navigate New York City.
The contest, which will remain up and online until February 19, asks U.S.-based players to try to answer four fairly abstruse questions about New York City using Bing Maps. The questions are generally things that all but the most knowledgeable Manhattanite will need to look up using bing’s maps and photo galleries: for example, what’s being promoted at the American Museum of Natural History right now, and how many toes Tyrannosaurs Rex has on its hind feet.
To make sure that participants in fact do search for the answers within Bing Maps and not elsewhere on the Internet, the scavenger hunt has a time dimension. The questions need to be completed within a total of four minutes, which tends to rule out using other resources for search—at least, on the first play. The game’s leaderboard, in which the slowest of the top ten players has a time of 4 seconds, suggests that participants have taken some short cuts to answer the four questions.
If a contestant answers any question incorrectly, he or she will automatically pop-up a video that gives brief instructions in how to use that particular feature of Bing Maps.
Those who complete the challenge and answer the questions correctly in less than 4 minutes total will have their names and IP addresses automatically entered into a drawing for one of two $100 Visa gift cards around February 19, 2010. Only one entry per person will be accepted.
The campaign’s aims are twofold. On the one hand, it’s meant to gain maximum exposure for Bing Maps, launched back in November and recently moved out of the beta test phase, as a superior alternative to Google Maps and Google Earth. On the other hand, the promotion seems designed to get growing numbers of consumers to download and install the Silverlight platform that powers this newest version of Bing Maps.
Silverlight is a Web app framework that Microsoft developed as a competitor to Adobe Flash. Microsoft has said that it hopes to increase the proportion of computers and devices using Silverlight software by building it into compelling applications such as Bing Maps, and, later this year, possibly into Windows Mobile, the company’s mobile operating system.
Bing Maps features not only a “Street Side” photo mapping that in many ways beats Google’s Street View but also a gallery of special applications that can overlay different features and functions on the maps. The company recently added two new ones: Events, which brings up current events and announcements relevant to the map under study and places them as pushpins; and Destinations, which allows the creation of specialized maps that can serve as party invitations or directions.
