The U.S. tech firms are teaming up with Cancer Research UK in a bid to give citizen scientists a gene-analyzing game that they can play on their mobile phones for a few minutes at a time. Read more »
DerbyJackpot combines the feel of casual social gaming with real life betting on horse tracks across the country. Thanks to a legal exception bets on horse-racing, the company is one of the few that can offer online gambling in the US. Read more »
Yes, gamification is trendy and overhyped, but that doesn’t mean it’s always ineffective. Gabe Zicherman, author of an upcoming book on the subject, looks at a few areas where companies are using gamification to find new efficiencies. Read more »
Redbox Instant is letting its users play for prizes to get feedback on its beta test, and collect a lot of useful data in the process. Data that one day could be used to improve the service’s movie discovery. Read more »
There’s a vast market for apps that tap into the human desire for self-improvement. But Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures says designers need to avoid relying on trendy gimmicks to woo potential users. Read more »
Can a virtual stock exchange for content curation, combined with Reddit-style voting, lead to better online video discovery? Turkey-based media curation startup Woisio thinks so, and it is trying to prove its theory with a private beta test of its new platform. Read more »
Gamification is thought of as a hyped buzzword by skeptics, but it’s increasingly being used by corporations to incentivize consumers and motivate employees. As enterprise adoption of gamification grows, that could make gamification startups the next hot acquisition target in the coming years. Read more »
Gamified classroom management platform ClassDojo is rolling out its first mobile app. Through the iOS app teachers will be able to give students feedback in real-time from their smartphones and tablets. The company said an Android app will follow shortly. Read more »
Already, workplaces are changing because of trends like BYOD and gamification. But other emerging technologies are also altering what our workspace looks like and how we collaborate. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
ClassDojo, a San Francisco-based startup that helps teachers manage student behavior with game mechanics, is launching out of beta with $1.6 million from some of Silicon Valley’s top investors. To date, the company says 3.5 million teachers and students globally are using its service. Read more »
In some circles, the phrase “gamification” may have gone out of fashion but, with help from Bunchball, Course Hero is intent on showing that it can still pack a punch in education and released some data to illustrate its point. Read more »
While skeptics still scoff at the term gamification, Badgeville keeps gaining the trust of big companies and investors, who believe in its power. Badgeville announced Wednesday it raised $25 million led by Interwest Partners, bringing its total funding to $40 million to date. Read more »
Hyperlocal mobile advertising is at a critical juncture: Leading analysts predict that mobile ad spending will increase by more than five times between 2011 and 2015. But what are the forces at play, and how effective are HyLoMo ads? Read more at GigaOM Pro »
While early critics may have scoffed, gamification start-up Badgeville just kept growing adding more clients and evolving from a gamification provider to a broader behavior platform utilizing games, reputation and social networking. Now, it’s releasing what it says is the first mobile gamification SDK for developers. Read more »
Memrise, a TechStars Boston graduate, has raised $1.05 million for its gamified approach to memorizing languages. The company supports six languages officially and has more than a million words created by its community. It’s now looking to expand beyond languages and will launch mobile apps soon. Read more »
Keas, a San Francisco-based startup co-founded by veteran technologist Adam Bosworth has raised $6.5 million in new funds from existing investors Atlas Ventures and Ignition Parters. The company is finding success with focus on wellness as a social game and selling it to large companies. Read more »
Companies are realizing that gamification, or the use of key game concepts to engage users and solve problems, can be a powerful way to create happiness and innovation and spur on results and education among their workforce, said Gabe Zichermann, CEO of Gamification.Co. Read more »
The future of work is already here. It is just already distributed, one might say. The freelance economy, microtasking, mobile workers, coworking spaces, crowdsourcing: All of these point to how work is increasingly shifting from the twentieth-century model of Taylorism (think scientific management applied to labor processes such as assembly-line production and fixed workplaces) to a more flexible, hyperspecialized and connected workforce. This report examines the new world of work, from the devices and software services we use to the growing role of social media, the importance of a group-centric mentality and how the roles of employees, managers and organizations are evolving. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A new commenting system at the New York Times has drawn fire from readers, but the motivation for the move is sound. If media companies want to behave like communities (which they should), they need to encourage their readers to “level up” and become more engaged. Read more »
Adam Bosworth, the founder and CTO of health start-up Keas said the key in transforming health care is not in personalized tools but in gamified systems for employees that build off competition and encouragement and help employers bring down their insurance costs. Read more »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Frontier Communications is trying to find new ways to provide value to subscribers and is rolling out one of the most comprehensive video portals online. With TumTiki, Frontier is bringing together more than 700,000 video assets from a combination of traditional broadcast TV and online sources. Read more »
Badgeville has been synonymous with gamification, the idea of incorporating game mechanics to motivate business employees and consumers to do specific tasks. But the company says it’s not stopping with gamification. It wants to shape behavior through game mechanics, private social networks and reputation. Read more »
Any seasoned fashionista knows that shopping is serious business, but that doesn’t explain why most retail sites are so boring. New service Fantasy Shopper wants to inject more fun into buying online by turning it into a social game. Can it succeed? Read more »
The rise of gamification has become an increasing point of contention over the past year. Now it seems a spat between two leading figures has left the movement facing a divisive split. The controversy centers on a new book by Gabe Zichermann called Gamification by Design. Read more »
Crowdtwist, a New York startup that recently graduated from TechStars’ New York class has been on a roll lining up customers like JCPenney, Live Nation and Sony Music. Now it’s announcing it has raised $6 million to expand its gamified social loyalty program. Read more »
Badgeville is introducing Social Fabric, a technology allows a website to quickly add a host of real-time social features on their site that charts user behavior, updates users on their on-site activities and allows people to follow any piece of content or fellow users. Read more »
Gamification is growing up. First it got its own conference, a new certification program and now consolidation. BigDoor, a gamified loyalty platform used in hundreds of websites, is announcing it’s buying up web check-in rewards provider OneTrueFan. Read more »
Some news sites such as The Huffington Post use badges and other kinds of reward systems to encourage user engagement and positive behavior in their online communities. Could doing this help Google overcome the downsides of anonymity without banning users who don’t use their real name? Read more »
Though the “gamification” of work has been something of a hot topic, there are some valid concerns about how game-like elements are incorporated into work and collaboration tools. Gamification may not only clash with a company’s culture, but also be a bit manipulative. Read more »
Gamification, that buzz word panned as hype by some, has increasingly won over companies, investors and even research firms like Gartner, which now predicts half of all companies will use gamification by 2015. So what’s next? How about gamification certification? Read more »
RedCritter Tracker is a thoughtfully gamified project management tool for software development teams that’s set to launch later this month. Founder and CEO Mike Beatty walked me through the app’s key capabilities, including project management support, visibility into employee skill sets, customizable rewards, and badges. Read more »
Imagine you have a new group of interns and you want them scouting a new location for your next store in San Francisco. You’d like to do some team building to warm them up to the task. You can build an app for that! Read more »
Bunchball, the social gaming software company, has raised $6.5 million in a new funding round. The San Jose, Calif.-based startup has recently received “knocks on the door” from potential acquirers, but opted to raise money instead to bet on growing more, CEO Jim Scullion told me. Read more »
Here on the internet, just because you build it, it doesn’t mean anyone will actually come. Or click on a link. Or leave a comment. Or become a Facebook fan.YouSendIt co-founder Ranjith Kumaran wants to change all that with his loyalty-marketing startup, PunchTab. Read more »
Gamification startup Badgeville expects to book $10 million in sales for 2011, its first year in business, according to CEO Kris Duggan. He claims that being the new kid on the gamification block is an asset. “We’ve built this over last year with modern approaches.” Read more »
For Silicon Valley startups, good timing can be just as crucial as good technology. Just ask Bunchball, the six-year-old, San Jose, Calif.-based, social gaming, software startup. In 2005, when the company debuted its software platform, the current industry buzzword “gamification” hadn’t even been coined yet. Read more »
Apple launched a brand new site offering tech support for its products on Saturday, called Apple Support Communities. The new site represents an evolution of its support discussion forums, where users offer advice to one another regarding technical issues or other problems with Mac products. Read more »
Can making email into a game make you more productive, encourage you to develop better habits and make email more fun? That’s the idea behind Baydin’s The Email Game, which applies gameplay mechanics to the process of working through your inbox. Read more »
I recently interviewed Daniel Debow, the co-CEO of enterprise social software company Rypple. During our conversation, we discussed the game-like constructs built into the Rypple software, like the concept of rewarding people with “badges” for giving recognition and building reputation within a company. Read more »
