What traits do playing games and online communities have in common?
Well known social media guru, Peter Kim, highlights some of them in his post on Applying Game Mechanics to Social Media...
- Collecting things: Humans have a primal instinct to collect and display. Offline, think about boy scout badges or Olympic pins. My old housemate used to collect commemorative Coca-Cola bottles. Online, we have our Twitter widgets, Facebook fan pages, and Flickr photo albums.
- Earning points: These define achievement and translate into social standing. Offline, it’s how NASCAR champions are crowned and how you earn a free airplane flight. Online, it’s the number of fans, friends, followers, or subscribers to your content. World-leading PR firms advise their clients to pay attention to individuals with “influence” and “authority” based on points. We reinforce the credibility of points by watching lists of top blogs, top tweeters, even top egos.
- System feedback: Offline, it’s the experience of shopping at an Apple store or your car accelerating when you press the gas. Online, it’s not comments, replies, or trackbacks (those feed into points & exchanges), but response from the system itself. How complete is your LinkedIn profile? How much Plurk karma do you have? Do you have Facebook for Blackberry installed yet?
- Value exchanges: Successful interactions. Offline, it’s us inviting each other’s kids to their birthday parties, or paying it forward to strangers. Online, it’s the process of interactions: Posting wall-to-wall. Sending a mini-ninja or martini glass. People “liking” your FriendFeed items. Twitter’s @ messages.
- Customization and personalization: User-created barriers to exit. Offline, it’s the color you chose to paint your house, the case for your iPhone, the stickers on your laptop. Online, it’s the extensive profile information you entered, the photos you uploaded, or the background picture that says something about your interests.
So, what sets those games that are evergreen apart from the once-off, fad-type games? Why is Monopoly one of the most popular board games year-on-year? Thus, more to the point, what can set your business’ web presence apart from any other business’ presence on the web? What are the secret ingredients to becoming evergreen?
Hmmm, do you have any thoughts?
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That’s the key question then – how do you get people engaged and involved. There’s an intersection with web analytics and purpose of visit that helps shed light on the answer. The work of Avinash Kaushik is worth reading to this end.
Good article, Peter (and Louis). There’s always a reward in playing games – and so, in a community, if you reward people, it works wonders.
Whether it’s prizes, awards or information – it’s always nice to get free stuff!