The BigDoor Blog | Social Media

This week in gamification news, we see quite a few large companies embracing and using gamification successfully. Enjoy!

Rules of Engagement: How Gamification is Changing the World Playmatics 10/10/2011 Margaret Wallace, CEO of Playmatics put together a fantastic presentation covering everything from ‘what is gamification?’ to ‘where will gamification end up?’ With great use of examples this is worth a look for anyone interested in gamification.

5 Companies That Are Using Big Data & Gamification to Disrupt Market Research GreenBook 10/16/2011 Looking for more ways gamification can help businesses? Leonard Murphy takes a look at the ways 5 big companies have used gamification to satisfy market research needs. Marcel Holsheimer who works in the enterprise marketing management division of IBM says of using new online technologies, “failing to adapt your business to the online world could mean eventual demise”.

Pepsi Launches Social-Viewing Platforms for ‘X Factor’ Advertising Age 10/18/2011 Pepsi is stepping up its online community for X Factor with the launch of Pepsi Pulse and Pepsi Sound Off. The two platforms provide a way for fans of the show to discuss, share and view other consumer conversations related to X Factor in exchange for bottle caps (used as a virtual currency) and status.

This weekend BigDoor’s co-founder and CEO, Keith Smith shared his thoughts about core metrics that really matter with the online publication Geekwire.  Keith walked through the four KPI’s that every site should focus on: Loyalty, Engagement, Virality and Revenue. As Keith stated in the article, “The simplicity provided by these 4 golden metrics allows us to focus on the key drivers of our business, no matter the size and scale of our audience.”

Today we share another great Guest Post from Adam Loving, a super-awesome Senior Developer who has been working with us for a few months now. Adam brings great energy and ideas to the team. In this post Adam explores 7 Viral Marketing Lessons. We offer a few of his tips below (not in any particular order) but you can read the full list here. Oh and the bonus…..there are more than seven tips!

• Sharing messages are critical, hard to template, and should be one of the first things designed
• Tweets, Invites, and Likes are a currency. You can charge for content in that currency
• In calls to action, ego (what are they saying about me?), humor, obligation, and sex are huge
• Draw your viral loops and funnels, and estimate the attrition at each stage

The BigDoor team has been watching with great interest the massive debate that Michael Arrington kicked off last week when he publicly blasted some of the practices of the large offer platforms.  He then followed that ambush up with a scathing report in TechCrunch.

All we can say is, well done Michael!

Well, maybe that’s not all we can say.  A few more thoughts on the subject.

Our founders have more battle scars than we ever cared to earn from public debates of this nature, and as a result we’d like to think that we’ve learned a few lessons along the way.  Here’s a few pointers we’d like to offer for no charge at all (virtual or otherwise) to the players in this debate:

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Today Eric Eldon from VentureBeat posted a presentation given by Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fran.

We’ve all known that Zynga is on a rocket ship, but it is cool to see their growth mapped on a chart. Fueled by well integrated virtual currency and offer platforms, their growth is nothing short of phenomenal.

What virtual currency, quality games and Facebook have done for Zynga.

View the full Zynga presentation here.