OMGPOP is a casual gaming and social networking site. We’ve previously written about meta games and gamified gaming, but OMGPOP deserves a little more atttention. The premise is simple: play games, earn coins. Use those coins to customize your profile, in-game characters and environments, earn coins by reading mailing list, winning games, answering survey questions…
Editor’s Note: There’s been a growing trend of esoteric competitions being the focus of documentaries over the past few years. The passion that the participants have for a prize most of us have never heard about is intriguing. But the spirit of competition is the same no matter what you’re playing for. We’ll be reviewing…
The Academy Awards are this Sunday and as per usual, people are making their winning picks for Best Picture, and Best Actor/Actress. If The Oscars and other similar industry awards are the prizes, is the act of film making a game in and of itself? Earlier this week we mentioned Clinton Bonner’s idea to gamify…
Clinton Bonner brings up some really interesting ideas about gamifying the movie theater experience in his recent blog post “Please Turn Your Cell Phones On! – The Future Movie Experience“. There have been many different attempts over the years to make watching films more interactive, from 3D glasses to the gimmicky catalog of director William…
Why waste time waiting for the bus when you can be scoring points for your ‘hood instead? January 28th marked the end of Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby in San Francisco. 20 Muni bus stop shelters were outfitted giant, 72 inch touch-screens where travelers-in-waiting can play one of 4 games. All the games were less than…
Experts Exchange is a site dedicated to bringing better IT assistance to the world through competitive gamification. Founded back in 1996, Experts Exchange invites knowledgeable techies from all over the world to answer questions from users in need who assign a point value to their query. A leaderboard keeps constant watch over the top experts…
Thesixtyone; a self-proclaimed music adventure, is a site dedicated to helping you discover music in a whole new way. According to co-founder James Miao “thesixtyone was born out of our (myself and my co-founder, Sam Hsiung) frustration with music sites. Mainstream music sites had hairy licensing restrictions that translated to poor user experiences. Independent content…
No matter how advanced technology becomes, there will always be some things that human beings just do better, such as recognizing distinctions in colors and patterns and prioritizing complex decisions. In the fields of human biology and DNA analysis, these skills are key to understanding genetic structure. Being able to recognize similarities and make distinctions…
If Yelp and GetGlue had a baby, it would probably look something like InTheMO, a new site (still in Alpha) that allows users to get & give recommendations of cool spots around the world. While there are a plethora of review sites for restaurants, clubs and the like, InTheMO specifically targets small social networks as…
I continue to get a lot of positive feedback about my talk at Mesh Marketing in Toronto last month. Kyra Aylsworth says she learned a lot from my presentation – so much so that it inspired this great blog post about it on teehanlax.com. I want to thank her for this piece, she clearly has…
Earndit is a new fitness check-in site that makes it easy for you to get rewarded for staying in shape. Their simple system acts as a great motivator and encourages you to keep a routine and rewards you for living healthier. Link your account to existing apps, Nike+, Garmin Connect, EveryTrail or Foursquare – this…
Looking for work is usually a frustrating, arduous process. Sending resumes, filling out applications, making phone calls, hitting up your business contacts and sometimes getting no reply or any indication that you’re making progress can make anyone feel downtrodden. And that’s just how things usually are. Even more so now, people are getting reduced to…
It was only a matter of time before someone created a location-based service that was directly linked to shopping. Even though apps like Foursquare and Gowalla are relatively new, it’s still surprising that it even took this long for us to have Facebook Deals. Once you sign up for Facebook Places, you can opt-into Deals….
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when designing engagement with gamification is to assume that cash (or stuff) is the ultimate reward. Time and time again, evidence shows that tangible rewards have serious deficits in an incentive scheme. Limitations include: They Can Turn Users Off: If your rewards don’t look good in…
For the record, I’m the classic casual gamer type. I play some games but I don’t get all crazy about beating them and don’t care a whole lot about having the high score. In fact, when something becomes too frustrating or competitive, I tend to put it down. I don’t have that “killer” instinct that…
