I have quite a few plans in store for Listen Before You Buy this year. Some will be trying out new ventures, some will be expanding the site to encompass more and varied material, and some may never even see the light of day.
One thing I’m interested in is the combination of sharing and technology and the tech world and social media are both things I read about and stay up to date on every day. For those of you who know relatively little about what the hell “Gamified” or Gamification is, here’s a short summary. Apps and sites like Foursquare allow people to check-in to a variety of places (in the real world, restaurants, shops, movie theatres etc) from your mobile device and each time you do, you earn points and badges and as you progress and check-in to more places, you level up, become mayor, and unlock more badges and so on and so forth. It’s meant to be a game between friends.
Well now it’s coming to websites. And now it’s here on Listen Before You Buy. Website gamification is relatively new and it’s not that widespread, but I’ve teamed up with the people at BigDoor to give it a trial run on the site. My goal is to reward the people who visit the site the most and who share the content that is posted. The cool thing is that just by you interacting with the site and sharing the content, you can win some really sweet prizes from us, including giftcards, vinyl, concert tickets, CDs, and more. The more you share, the more points you get. The more points you get, the better chance you have of winning.
First to 1,000 points in a given month is the winner. It’s that simple (but be warned, we know how to catch people who cheat).
Here’s how it works.
- At the bottom of every page on the site is a bar that you can use to check-in with (currently you can only check-in with a Facebook account, and if you don’t have one they only take a couple of minutes to make)
- Click on the “Check In” button and it’ll open up a box to login with your Facebook account
- Each time you interact with the site you earn points. Check-Ins get you get 5 points, Sharing content gets you 25 points, and every time someone visits the site via a link that you shared, you get 50 points
- You also earn badges as you share more, progress further,, gain influence, and level up
- There’s a leaderboard of who’s winning and where you place with how many points you have so you can keep track
- And you can share content either via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Email.
As I said, this is a trial run. This may be a complete failure or it may be a huge success, but I’m prepared for both. All I ask is that you share the content that you like because you like it, not because it’ll get you points.
If you notice any bugs or have any questions or suggestions, hit me up in the comments.
The Black Keys – “Thickfreakness”
