DailyBlogr - How to make your social media app sticky ? Simple. Turn it into a game ! #Fail

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Quite honestly, I think this is going a bit too overboard now. Every new app in town is a game. A stupid f***ing game with badges / levels / titles and all that. Sick.

It was obvious when it all started, that there are more levels coming, more badges to be won and this is going to get you. And it did, at first. It was fun. Foursquare, Gowalla and all those social media networks offering you badges for everything you did. But now, every new network has a game for you.

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Image Credit – Boing Boing

In fact, the whole social networking thing had a “video game effect” to it right from the beginning. You do something unusual, you get a special status, you make the maximum posts, you get another badge. I’ve seen them earlier on Mixx, where you get a special badge when you cross certain milestones. Digg had a similar strategy but nothing was ever written. If you make it to the front page several times and if you have lots of fans, you become a “power user”. We loved the “video game effect” and the whole addiction thingy.

But now, the whole scenario has changed. The content and the actual app takes a back seat, and instead its the game that’s got your attention. And developers/owners of these apps are not refusing to try it out even at the early stages of app release just to get you clicked. That’s where the breaking point is.

Hollrr, Gowalla, Foursquare are all games to name a few, that have allowed (knowingly or unknowingly) the product’s real use to take a backseat while the gaming action catches on. And we’re all playing, hopefully for ever, or until we figure out what the final badge is.

But isn’t this an unhealthy strategy to adopt ?

At least for the new apps that are coming up, if you’re planning to adopt the gaming strategy to add “stickyness” to your product…please…my request is that you reconsider it. Because in the coming days, we’re going to see more and more “games” come up, more and more badges pin up and more and more “Mayors” being chosen. But the question is, is this all that’s required ? Can someone figure out a new way to break out of this ?

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Oh ! Just got this email. Gotta go !

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