Fun and games
In an interesting twist, an epidemiologist used an in-game epidemic that spread throughout World of Warcraft (a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, for those unfamiliar with WoW) to study how epidemics might spread in the real world. Alerted to the "Corrupted Blood" epidemic in World of Warcraft by one of her students, the epidemiologist observed what took place and was inspired to add new factors to her own computed-generated epidemic models.
Most of the discussion of gaming that I've heard recently in the association and business worlds has centered around education--how can we use games to help our members or customers learn? I haven't seen much conversation about the flip side of this, which the epidemiologist in the linked article grasped so quickly--how can we learn about our members by seeing how they play games?
Which actually leads to another interesting social media application that we haven't discussed yet this month: online prediction markets. Basically, these are stock markets of ideas. At the Hollywood Stock Exchange, you can trade on the success of actors and the movies they star in; the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business operates real-money prediction markets focusing on politics and economics.
Could a prediction market for your profession or industry be a game that your members could both enjoy and take seriously? And what could you learn from seeing them participate?
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Comments
When I chose my title of "CIO" which stands for Chief Involvement Officer (not Information) I did so with the knowledge that I don't care how technology works. I only care about how people are using it and are they actually getting things done. As a platform that enables the creation of white-label social networks, you would think our focus would be on getting millions of users and that quantity was king.
I am much more interested in the 8-member private book club who are actually engaged and participating in meaningful exchange than a 50,000 member association who are not even talking to each other.
I simple indicator of engagement is taking a look at what percentage of a given online community actually took the time to upload an actual photo into their profile. If they simply show the default avatar does that mean they don't know how to upload a photo, don't feel they have a good enough photo to pass their own vanity test or perhaps simply haven't built enough trust and respect among other members to take the time to share this information with the group?
We don't believe social networking should be a spectator sport and spend a lot of time looking at how and why members participate in groups.
Thanks for the thoughtful post.
Posted by: Shaun Callahan | November 29, 2007 8:35 AM