Blekko, once “the little search engine at could,” not the “feisty raccoon of the search engine world,” has had its share of strange promotions in the past. Beyond simply feeding into the media attention given to Google’s allowance of spam content, Blekko threw a spam clock onto the web and even burned stuff to celebrate when that clock hit a million (it’s getting close to two million now). They’ve brought on community celebrities to serve as editors for specific slashtags, partnered with Facebook for a /likes tag. All of that seems petty when you compare them to the current promotion, however: Blekko trading cards.
Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta described the motivation for making the cards: “We wanted to do a cool booth giveaway rather than just a pen or a squishy ball.” This was all for the purposes of the SXSW (South by Southwest) Conference this month and other conventions in the future. The trading cards (some of which are pictured below, courtesy of the Blekko blog) discuss the different Blekko slashtags, and were commissioned from Alligator Planet.
- Twenty different cards are available, so becoming an expert collector shouldn’t be too tough (unlike Pokemon, which is up to 1.3 trillion violent, adorable creatures). The cards will also give details on other Blekko promotions, including iPad giveaways at several of the upcoming conventions.
- [via the Blekko Blog – and congratulations, Blekko, for finally getting that blog onto the web!]