POSTED BY

Steven Leckart

AT 3:40 PM
Wednesday July 29, 2009

Community • Reviews • Software

gdgt • recommendation • SuperFan • website

Why Overt Gaming Could Take Over Social Networks & Recommendation Engines

foursquare collage.jpg

I'm the Mayor of my local dog park. For two days, I was also the Mayor of Wired Magazine's San Francisco office. I'm now recovering from a disconcerting case of TMI-tus. All thanks to Foursquare, a GPS-enabled app I downloaded to my phone.

If you're unfamiliar, here's how it works: You launch the app, your phone determines your location, and you then have the option to broadcast this "news" to your friends, Twitter followers, etc. and add tips about, say, a restaurant &mdash what to order, what table to sit at, what time to go, etc.

But here's the catch: it's a game. Points are awarded every time you check in. Additional points are handed out if you do this frequently at multiple locations. Even more points are earned every time you add a new location to Foursquare's database.

The result: I ranked #14 on the San Francisco leaderboard after a long, exhausting weekend.

The purpose: I have no clue.

...Or actually, maybe I do. Find out after the jump.

photos by Adam Jackson & Filmoculous

I could care less about seeming active or hip. So I shared indiscriminately. Every restaurant, bar, museum, bus stop, park. I went in deep to get a feel for what a user might get from this.

What I discovered is that things can get heated. For instance, when I'm not Boinging, I work part-time at Wired. The fact I earned the right to call myself the Mayor of Wired didn't sit right with at least one of my co-workers. He decided to make it his mission to stage a coup.

He won.

I unceremoniously retired from Foursquare.

Around the same time, the launch of gdgt got me thinking. It's a user-generated service &mdash much like Foursquare &mdash that relies on average joe's to help fill out a huge database of potentially-useful info. Only instead of locations, gdgt wants the 411 on products: specs, prices, launch dates, photos, and more.

Each gadget gets a page, which &mdash much like Wikipedia &mdash can be edited and updated by users. Again, much like Wikipedia, active users do this for status and reputation*. I'm not trying to take the piss out of the gift or freeconomy. There are people sharing information, goods and services unselfishly with no expectation of reward or public acknowledgment.

The benefits of a site like Foursquare aren't so explicit. At its core, it's a recommendation engine (eat here, order this) and a tool for motivating to try new places. Like Yelp, with less commitment.

My question &mdash and feel free to voice your thoughts in the comments &mdash is whether even more overt gaming could drive a site like Wikipedia or gdgt in ways that Foursquare seems to? I'm guessing the answer is yes. But does gaming cheapen the experience or, as it did in my case, drive away users? I'm guessing the answer is maybe.

The difference between social networking or collaborative wiki-work and this next phase is exemplified by transparent quantification. Or, more obviously, it's not a game which exists primarily in our heads &mdash i.e. "I made 372 edits this week; I'm awesome" or "I accrued 29 followers." It's not a game that only some choose to see as a game. Instead, everyone involved knows they're being counted. By virtue of participation, you're ceding the fact you will appear somewhere on the leaderboard. Whether you care where is another matter.

This brings me to a site called SuperFan, which wants to be gdgt for everything (all products, musicians, movies, sports teams, Jello shots and more). The site, which launched in June, touts a reward system that goes beyond offering mere social capital:

As a user accrues points for adding photos, information, etc., she's awared a new reputation level (much like Foursquare's badges, pic above). At every new level, you get a bucket of credits, then bid eBay-style for absolute control over her favorite page/URL. Say you're a big Genesis fan (the band or the console). You can use your earned points &mdash or purchase credits via credit card &mdash to be in charge of changing the page's color palette, photos, video, etc.

I should mention you only get to control the page for 5 minutes. Then, if someone outbids your previous bid, they become the webmaster of that page.

Maybe you think this sounds lame.

I'll admit, it's not my bag. But I'll also admit I didn't think Foursquare would be as fun or as interesting as it was. And still, even more of my peers are playing the game.

It's way too early to tell if SuperFan will gain any traction. Facebook could blink twice and throw up similar functionality**. But imagine if you got 5 points for every friend you made on Facebook? Or 10 points for every follower on Twitter? And with those credits you could unlock new features, functionality, or simply get invited to exclusive meet-ups a la Yelp.

Seems like an obvious way to boost engagement, no?

Either way, it's safe to say building in overt, highly-structured gaming could very well become the next go-to tactic for driving adoption and cultivating an avid user base. For a social network, online service, and especially the plethora of iPhone and other mobile apps launching, that kind of attention is golden.

*How participating in a site like gdgt affects purchasing habits is a question reaserchers would love to answer.

**SuperFan founder Rick Marini says there's no indication Facebook has any interest in gaming or, more to the point, aggregating the hundreds of disparate fan pages that have been created on Facebook for an artist like Lil' Wayne. Whereas SuperFan will offer only one page.


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10 Comments

Anonymous Anonymous

#1 – 4:50 PM July 29, 2009

Steven and Lisa, whatever you use to make your posts is leaving off the semicolon at the end of HTML character entity references. For example &mdash instead of — . Firefox interprets a non-semicolon-termintated entity reference, but Internet Explorer requires a semicolon on the end.

It's cumbersome to have to read &mdash all over the place. Consider looking into something that puts the semicolon on the end of these character references.

Pete

#2 – 6:28 PM July 29, 2009

This is quite a brilliant analysis of contemporary trends - indeed, throw in a little theory (Henry Jenkins would be a good touchstone) and you have the makings of at least some masters-level research.

I must be getting old though, as I immediately thought of buying more books and using less internet when I finished reading this post. Living in a world defined by gaming structures sounds hideous.

WalterBillington

#3 – 5:53 AM July 30, 2009

@1 you may have already got there, but you are actually living in a world of gaming structures. It's human behaviour.

James

#4 – 5:54 AM July 30, 2009

This also brings up the question of people who play only for ranking, and don't care how they get it.

By Adding in game funcionality you also add the desire to 'win'. Some people will do anything to win, even if it means spreading false info everywhere they can as fast as they can just to get the points....

Foursquare probably wouldn't see this problem since you have to actually be somewhere for it to work, but think of friend counts on myspace for instance, no one really has that many real friends, yet somehow for alot of myspace users it's some kind of bragging right. It won't matter if the info shared is true or not, some people will just abuse to get rank.

Yamara

#5 – 6:01 AM July 30, 2009

One comparison should be boardgamegeek.com, which rewards some database submissions with "GeekGold"--mainly useful for buying status badges--but other corrections are not rewarded. There's also a thumbs system, and actual game designers & publishers get some acknowledgments gratis--if they're smart enough to figure out how to get them.

This is a community of gamers immersed in face-to-face courtesy, but nerdly aware of internet mores, so their input on what makes a site balanced between game challenge and accessibility would be worth examining.

Steven Leckart

#6 – 8:47 AM July 30, 2009

@James:

Actually you can cheat/game Foursquare. Thy don't verify you are where you claim to be. A user can also add locations that are questionnable -- "my car" for instance.

@Anonymous:

Thanks for letting me know about the dashes.

Enochrewt

#7 – 8:51 AM July 30, 2009

#4: Even foursquare could have issues with that. Who honestly is going to check to see if the left water fountain next to the bumper cars at the amusement park works better than the right one? Yet foursquare die hard got some points off of it. For the love of Bob, you're at the amusement park, you shouldn't be blogging about the damn water fountains.

Maybe my example doesn't hold up, I don't know. I do know I just went and looked at the foursquare site, and the most popular to-dos in NYC (I'm not in NYC, don't know why their telling me about it) are about bars. Really? You're in a bar talking about that bar on your phone? If I was there with you I'd feed you an impromptu knuckle sandwich.

I'm just not not with the social networking thing. Sure, sometimes it's beneficial, I have a friend from Nepal living here in the U.S. that gets a lot less homesick because of the advent and prevalence of social networking sites. Unfortunately other times it's just a waste of information space, a bunch of people shouting things at the world that no one wants to hear.

Oh and I can't wait for the first person to sue Foursquare because a thousand people recommended a BBQ, only to find out it served longpig or something else repulsive.

PlushieSchwartz

#8 – 11:18 AM July 30, 2009

"active users do this for status and reputation*"

You're talking about Cory Doctorow's 'whuffie'! Yay, can't wait.

adam jackson

#9 – 2:23 PM August 1, 2009

Hey. Thanks Steven for proper credit of my photo. I really appreciate it. Tons of photos are used without credit.

richandcreamy

#10 – 4:06 AM August 3, 2009

4Square fills in a niche for me. I never got the hang of always checking into a place via a gps enabled phone. 1. Hated waiting for gps to load on a g1 2. I lost it! but hey I can check in via SMS now from my dumb phone I picked up.

I'm pretty sure as features roll out we'll get something to do with our points. Maybe parties like Yelp (I'm Elite btw) or other sponsored things? (free drinks I hope! shoot twitter gets me free drinks!)


@Enochrewt

I set up my check in right before getting to the bar/club/venue and send it while the door man checks my ID. Also, the system is hardly set up so a 1,000 people can crash a BBQ.

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