I recently got a Raspberry Pi zero and was trying to use my code that works on a raspberry pi 3 to drive the blinkstick. It doesn’t even recognize that a blinkstick is there.
OK, It is working now. The only thing I can think is that I was powering the pi zero from a USB port before and now that it is actually plugged in to power it seems happy.
Thank you for sharing your experience 
Well, after a reboot it doesn’t work again now. I see all of the LED’s blink on power on, but once in shell it doesn’t recognize that it is plugged in at all.
Ok, as long as I’m sharing. I think I have it figured out. I’m doing a build and had switched out a microusb cable for a shorter one, and I’m pretty sure it was that cheap cable couldn’t pass data. Nothing to see here.