Just when you think we’ve seen it all, a new social media application comes along and wham! it rocks the Internet, getting its founders into the digital Hall of Fame. When it seems the online arena is densely populated with huge corporations, is it still possible for you to come up with the next big thing on the Internet? Can your idea be the one that rocks the Internet?
There are so many factors at play, but I really enjoyed Robert Scoble’s recent post highlighting an interesting aspect of successful social media applications: addictiveness:
The social behavior incentive (how your app can be as addictive as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare)
The basic idea is, make your application into a competitive game. Let your users work their way towards titles, figured and new records. Scoble provides some excellent detailed tips on how to achieve just that and do read the comments there as well – there some gems that complement the original post and inject more insights into building a great social media application/website.
I can think about many websites that implement this line of thought. Take Squidoo and Hub Pages, with their scoring systems; Social bookmarking sites with their voting system; Forums with the popular hacks for points, karma, or simply the user title ladder.
The rewards system works. We enjoy building our virtual social media profiles as if they were our character in WOW. Keep it in mind if you want to get into the social media game and be “the next big thing”.
{ 2 comments }
Twitter: websiteweekend
January 26, 2010 at 11:53 am
Anne, I’m liking your site the more I visit. You’re buried in my RSS feed somewhere, I need to dig you out, put you in a higher priority folder.
So, yeah, how to build rewards into these blog things? I haven’t had much luck with offers, probalby due to lack of traffic and lack of reputation. Working on all that now.
Foursquare is addictive.
Dave Doolin´s last blog post ..Happy Anniversary! Website In A Weekend is 1 Year Old
I am toying with some ideas myself. Maybe work a rewards system into the commenting system. Maybe something that shows the number of comments a user has made, with a little medal next to it? Would have to hire a code to write the plug-in, I guess.
So glad you like this blog! Thank you for your comments!
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