Hello GCo Readers! In light of the passing holiday, I would like to present this roundup in the guise of remembering the fallen startups of our past. The news presented this week will allow you to incorporate gamification for loyalty, check out one case where gamification didn’t work, inspire you about gamification in recruitment, and provide a free gamification platform for Salesforce. Remember the fallen startups and don’t follow the same path! Check out the full roundup after the jump.
5 Ways to Gamify Customer Loyalty – Mashable, May 25
Gabe Zichermann writes an Op-Ed underlining some tips that could be useful for any startup looking to use gamification to quickly build customer loyalty: 1) Choose an easy to understand action as the core of your product (i.e. checking in or commenting). 2) Incorporate an XP system to show user progress. 3) Add 5 social actions (comment, like, challenge) and attribute XP points to those actions. 4) Build appointment mechanics to get your users to return to your site. 5) Have rewards based on SAPS (Stuff, Access, Power, Stuff).
Why Twitter’s Co-founder Dropped Gamification – AllThingsD, May 24
Twitter Co-founder, Tony Stubblebine, is close to releasing his new startup called Lift. Intended to be a personal betterment application, Lift initially had gamification elements but has since been redesigned to exclude them. The application now only includes one part social element and one part self-quantification. Stubblebine reported dropping gamification increased retention to 50 percent from 5 percent and attributed it to users only following a rigid structure under gamification as opposed to finding real personal motivation. The real question is whether or not this gamification was ever appropriately incorporated.
New Video Game Startups Being Used for Recruitment – Economist, May 26
Guy Haftec, founder of new startup Knack, has created several video games designed to test cognitive skills desirable by employers. With games such as “Happy Hour” and “Words of Wisdom”, Knack has developed these tests to incorporate three things: gaming, large amounts of data, and behavioral insights from science. Currently under a pilot test in Yale, Haftec is claiming as little as ten minutes of play is all that is can generate enough data to predict performance.
Nitro Goes Freemium – pandodaily, May 23
Bunchball has just released Nitro Basic as a free version of their regular Nitro app for Salesforce. The app seems to be a simplified version of the regular paid Nitro app but has easy access for users to upgrade to the more advanced features if they choose to pay for it. Great news for startups wishing to try it out but don’t have the capital for the full version.
Image (CC) – by Cristian_RH7
