Four Square is a great example of a social and mobile site that has gamification baked into the model. It's also a great concept from the consumer web that can be harnessed for use in business software by Salesforce.com and other providers of social CRM.
What works well with FourSquare is the immediacy in which you earn points, badges and mayorships, which encourages the check-in process. The real-time nature of a gaming engine which underlies the check-in process constitutes a core tenant of gamification. New points and progress toward mayorship are immediately shown upon check in alongside the leaderboard.
This encourages healthy competition with your friends – hence the gaming component. Outside of this, the behavioral incentive to checking in is that you can get recommendations based on your location and you can identify category experts and read their tips to help guide your decisions – which restaurant to try, what beach to go to, etc.
Dislikes: 1) The incentive to checking in could be stronger that the game and the tips alone. The Groupon and HowAboutWe (dating) might soon change this. If higher tier offers or meeting someone new we reserved for those with status (in points or badges), we could see foursquare becoming more of a traditional rewards program model akin to a SPG or AAdvantage. 2) There is different functionality and UI for the mobile and web-based apps so you cannot look up your points and the leader board on the web.
Salesforce.com Chatter is a great social use case for the web for building private social networks. Chatter is a perfect example of a site that could be enhanced through the inclusion of gamification. There are plenty of metrics that are tracked similar to Linkedin or Twitter. You can see how many posts and responses, followers, following, likes, etc. and these can be displayed through chatter analytics (reports).
As collaboration software, the goal is to motivate more interactivity. A gaming engine which encourages or rewards real-time responses will directly support this as an end. Through gamification, Chatter could give out points for posts and replies developing a teamwork leaderboard, which you can see on your profile much like the foursquare example above. Teamwork analytics can become part of a company’s DNA and incorporated into performance reviews; rewards programs; and existing chairman’s or president’s club.
Chatter collaboration has many benefits - firms more competitive, agile, build institutional knowledge, and more. But unless you encourage adoption, the solution will fall back to the “golden rule” or “you only get back what you put in.” Gamification would drive more real-time behavior. People could strive to be the top expert on MSFT or ORLC competition or the leader of an industry sector team.
Inclusion of gamification component to chatter will also help build a more powerful ROI case for selling the chatter product. Imagine being able to pitch increased collaboration in industries such as financial advisors or real estate brokers who notoriously hoard info and do not collaborate. Gamification will enhance the product and create value for these types of firms. Further, when chatter.com is opened up to more external networks – meaning customers’ customers – there will be greater potential to help increase the engagement between them.
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