:: LNR Journalism ::

Badgeville brings gamification to Facebook, Twitter

CMSWire :: If you needed a few more reasons to spend hours on social media, gamification software maker Badgeville and social analytics provider PeopleBrowsr have created a solution that enables organizations to extend their gamification programs beyond their own applications and websites. The new features allow organizations to incentivize and reward users for their actions on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites. There goes the rest of my day.

A report by Josette Rigsby, www.cmswire.com

Is Gamification for Real? An interview with Gabe Zichermann

SYS-CON MEDIA :: The gamification market is expanding. By 2015, in the world’s largest companies, Gartner believes half of all corporate innovation will derive from gamification. In the same year, M2 Research predicts more than $2.5 billion of direct spend in the US for gamification, including software and technology.

Gabe Zichermann, founder of the popular gamification.co blog, Chair of the Gamification Summit and author of “Gamification by Design” and "Game-Based Marketing" views the appeal of gamification as chemical. “It’s the challenge, achievement loop,” he said. “Any time you challenge yourself and achieve, your brain releases dopamine: the wonder drug”.

A report by Shelly Palmer, www.sys-con.com

"Fun is the future: Mastering Gamification," Google Tech Talk October 26, 2010, presented by Gabe Zichermann

NewsGame: What about a journalism game that yields real news stories?

Niemanlab :: Game makers turned to journalism for inspiration long before Atari gave us Paperboy. What about a journalism game that yields real news stories? Thomas Loudon, CEO of the Dutch startup VJ Movement, is trying it. Here’s the idea for NewsGame, a Facebook game now in development: Players take on the role of foreign correspondents and face mini-challenges within the game world, such as “you have to cross the border into Iran” or “save child soliders in Somalia,” Loudon told me.

NewsGame - Continue to read Adrienne LaFrance, www.niemanlab.org

Scoople, gaming the news to get your data

Niemanlab :: Scoople is a polling company that acts like a media aggregator but operates as a game. But you wouldn’t necessarily know that if you’ve been spending time with the newish app, which gives users points for answering questions about news stories, and predicting other users’ answers.

Would you pay $130 to enable the lights in your home to be controlled with your iPhone?
Yes       |          No

Continue to read Adrienne LaFrance, www.niemanlab.org

Niemanlab:

Scoople is a social news game, an aggregator, and, ultimately, a pollster. nie.mn/Mn4f3H

— Nieman Lab (@NiemanLab) June 26, 2012

Technology Review goes digital first

Technology Review :: Beginning today, and reaching a kind of climax in October, you will see an increasing number of changes at Technology Review. The changes are part of a new commitment on our part to becoming a more digital-first media company. T

o be clear: digital first doesn’t mean that we won’t publish our print magazine in the United States or internationally. We know some people find print the preeminently pleasurable medium; we’ll publish print magazines so long as I am the publisher of Technology Review. But henceforth people will be able to read everything we publish free of charge on the Web, and we’ll publish nothing first in print.

Continue to read Jason Pontin, www.technologyreview.com

2012 elections: MTV swaps out citizen journalism for gamification

Niemanlab :: Taking cues from fantasy football, MTV is partnering with a group of news organizations on a game they hope will engage youth with elective politics. The network has long experimented with ways to engage young voters, but this year it’s trading citizen journalism for a gamification approach to elections coverage.

Continue to read Adrienne LaFrance, www.niemanlab.org

Kia gamified ads to push purchase intent and product awareness

BizReport :: Recently automotive brand Kia tapped SocialVibe to launch a gamified ad campaign for their Optima sedan. Targeting adults between ages 25 and 49, the campaign showed: ad completion rates of 95%; average 'plays' per user: 1.27; average time spent at 129 seconds per user; click-through rates of 19%, to Kia Optima site.

[Kristina Knight:] .. of even more importance, though, the campaign helped to improve both purchase intent and product awareness.

Continue to read Kristina Knight, www.bizreport.com

Likes? Tweets? Gamification: Turning a connection into interaction

Vator.TV :: Michael Wu is chief scientist, from Lithium.com. Wu has spent a fair amount of his career investigating the complex dynamics of the social Web and applying that to help businesses gain the most from the people that are already active online. While many businesses believe that any social connection is equal to interaction, Wu reminds us that they are not equal. Don't you have some LinkedIn or Facebook connections that you never interact with? Enough said.

[Michael Wu:] The idea behind gamification is really simple -- we all like to play. So how do we make a work more like a game ... we create a latent value in turning a connection into an interaction.

Continue to read Michael Wu, vator.tv

Gamification to raise user engagement: Leverage user's common activity

Vator.TV :: While many businesses are fluttering about to engage their social audience in order to magically boost brand awareness and revenue, some entrepreneurs are saying that getting people to tweet and "like" you on Facebook isn't a whole lot of bang for your marketing bucks. On Tuesday, May 1, Vator brought together various gamification thought leaders to share insight on how gamification can benefit businesses when thoughtfully executed at the gathering Vator Spark.

Ranjith Kumaran, co -founder of YouSendIt.com and founder of PunchTab.com did some research and found out that social engagement only moves a very small number of people so you can't focus your entire brand outreach on something with such a small amount of effect. YouSendIt founder believes companies need pick 5 metrics before gamifying the business.

[Ranjith Kumaran:] When you are building a game to incentivize users for your company it is important to leverage things that are already a part of the user's common activity.

Continue to read Krystal Peak, vator.tv

A social game in Georgia tries to bring residents together

Niemanlab :: I recently caught up with Goldfin and the foundation’s Beverly Blake about a Knight-funded social-impact game called Macon Money, which was aimed at strengthening community ties and bolstering economic revitalization in Macon, Ga. This wasn’t a newsy experiment per se, but its focus on how to engage communities — and exploring new ways to connect them with one another — is in many ways applicable to newsrooms still finding their footing in an ever-changing digital media world.

[Beverly Blake:] The goal was to create the environment where people who otherwise would not have had an opportunity to meet one another, to meet and get to know one another.

Continue to read Adrienne LaFrance, www.niemanlab.org