Social validation may sound like a lonely high-schooler’s dream, but in terms of gamification, it is a powerful social mechanic that can expand the user base and keep users honest. Social image is important in the People’s Republic, where “keeping face” is a traditional value, and Kwestr, a new startup out of China, hopes to expand beyond the typical social features by focusing on social validation for the “gamification of real life”.
Kwestr, started by American Frank Yu, is built with integration with both Sina Weibo (one of China’s largest social networking sites) as well as Facebook (which is currently blocked by China’s Firewall). Kwestr itself is very similar to DailyFeats or HealthMonth, and encourages users towards daily achievements in life and health. Kwestr’s model (with kwests as achievements), allows users to make their own multi-leveled quests. One community made example, “Learn Mandarin Chinese” is an eight-step process beginning with signing up for a course and ending with “Go to public areas and yell the Mandarin Chinese you learned. Please do not offend anyone in the process.”
The new gamification mechanic, which I haven’t seen elsewhere, is the push to have friends and other Kwestrs “validate” after a user claims success. It is somewhat similar to Jane McGonigal’s SupperBetter and its focus on checking-in with allies, but in Kwestr, users must ask friends not yet on Kwestr to help them out by validating their achievement on the web. In-app validation drives friends to the game and encourages a viral spread of the system, and it also gives social importance to individual achievements, something that flashy badges could never do.
Although Kwestr is still rough around the edges (its in beta), there is already a growing community using the web app. Upon a quick visual survey, it looks like the validation feature is being used for less than 5% of the achievements. Some tweaking is needed in order for the mechanic to reach its potential, but social validation may be the key to encouraging real world change. Have you seen any other apps that use social validation? Are they successful?
Great blog!
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Thanks,
SL
Interesting… but… is it just like iKwest? Because it sounds like it’s the same thing, only iKwest has been doing this for longer though… check it out: http://www.ikwest.com
🙂
MC
Beyond the “Kwest” bit, it seems like the two are somewhat different. iKwest is akin to geotagging or fitness games, in getting players to a physical location to solve puzzles. Kwestr has a more broad scope, in that academic, personal, and professional goals fit into the system (similar to DailyFeats, which I mentioned in the article). What do you think?
[…] Kwestr Ett kinesiskt och amerikanskt samarbete riktat mot stora kinesiska communitys. Använder en del olika spelmekanaiker och fokuserar på att “spelifiera livet”. Exemepl är att folk kan sätta upp mål och när de har gjort klar sina mål kan andra människor bekräfta att de gjort det. http://gamification.co/2011/11/02/new-chinese-startup-aims-to-gamify-real-life/ […]