This week on the Gamification Roundup, we got gamification expansion. In the news provided today, see how gamification is expanding in the industry in innovation and industry: Badgeville nets $25 in funding. Sensum gamifies the sweat on your skin. Zurmo releases its open-source and gamified CRM platform in beta. Pug Pharm aims to create a unified gamification/analytics platform for the mobile market. And finally, China’s censorship laws resort one microblog to incorporate a point system for policy breakers. Read the full roundup after the jump.
Badgeville Scores Another $25M in VC – Badgeville, May 30
Gabe Zichermann reported on this last week with a little anecdote but for the roundup, it is worth noting that Badgeville has secured $25 million in venture financing led by InterWest Partners. Since their debut in September 2010, Badgeville has secured a total of $40M. It is wonderful to see that the gamification industry is still growing at a marvelous pace.
Sensum Gets Users to Compete with Their Sweat – NewScientist, May 28
Let those sweaty armpits get you some points! Created by Shimmer Research, Sensum is a wrist-mounted galvanic skin response sensor (GSR) that works alongside its mobile phone app via bluetooth connection. The device measures how much sweat the user’s skin has and sends that data to the Sensum website. All collected sweat data is attributed point values and can be visualized through a video to measure when you were most engaged/sweaty with what you were doing. Sensum was even used for an interactive horror film, in which the movie’s soundtrack and gore increased proportionally to how much sweat was being measured on the viewers. It would be interesting to see if this could have potential exercise applications as well.
CRM Gets Fun with Zurmo – Newsfactor, May 31
Looking for that gamified CRM solution? Zurmo is an open-source CRM platform with a gamification layer that just announced its 0.6.6 beta release. The game will feature a point system, achievement milestones, and even specific levels for different categories, such as “New Business Sales” and “Time Management”. There is also a challenge system in which users and managers alike can challenge each other to accomplish specific tasks. Any open-source gamification solution is bound to evolve and grow stronger as time goes on – best of all, you can try the beta version now!
Pug Pharm Aims For Universal Gamification Platform – MarketWatch, May 29
Bitzio Inc has announced its plans to partner up with Pug Pharm Productions Inc. to create a unified gamification and analytics platform for the mobile market. Traditional gamified applications tend to have a currency, points, and items that can only be used in the application it came from but Pug Pharm wants to have a system that will allow users to retain their hard-earned achievements across different application. Bitzio is also promising a deeper analytics platform that can draw information from multiple applications on the platform. If successful, Pug Pharm could mean the new standard for gamified platform services.
Chinese Censorship Receives a Point System – NYTimes, May 28
One of China’s largest microblogging platforms has imposed a point system to crack down on people attempting to bypass the site’s censorship policies. Sina Weibo has given 300 million users 80 points that can be deducted until they are banned from the website. Points are deducted for a variety of reasons, including calling for protest, spreading rumors, and using wordplay to bypass censors. On the flipside, microbloggers could also increase their points total to 100 if they participate in unspecified promotional activities. Novel use of a point system, but it is eerie to consider that this system is just an extension of the government’s censorship goals.
Image (CC) – by Aaronth
