The crux behind game mechanics is the feeling that you’ve accomplished something; “Whether you’re clicking on a plot of land or a musical note, that is an accomplishment” says Social Gaming Network’s Shervin Pishevar. Social gaming gives you the opportunity to share these goals with your social graph so that many people see them, as well as the chance to work on these accomplishments collaboratively.

At Friday’s Social Currency CrunchUp, leaders from the Social Gaming space including Pishevar, Disney Mobile SVP Bart Decrem, Stanford School of Business Professor Jennifer Acker and SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch sat down together in order to discuss gaming’s latest incarnation.


What elements are needed for addictive games?

Pavlovian mechanics are crucial. It’s important as a user to feel like the time that you spent came up with a result, social elements like being able to see how you did with other people, and being able to play with other people play into this. Integration with music also creates an emotional linkage, one thing responsible for Tapulous’ success was the functionality to apply multiple songs from artists like Justin Bieber to Lady Gaga.

Decrem elaborates, “There’s an actual science around how to engage and monetize users, the Farmville harvest mechanic, for example. On mobile, its ‘the x factor’ does the game have magic?” What we’re now seeing is what happens when the science of game mechanics in social games is combined with the quirkiness of what you see on the iPhone platform.

According to Seth Priebatsch, new employees at SCVNGR memorize a deck of 50 game dynamics like the progression dynamic, or earning points to make progress. They then can incorporate those elements into a game, “Humans love progress bars, if you see a progress bar, you want to complete it.”


How will games increasingly square with the real world?

Currently all the value creation happens mostly on Facebook, but that will soon change. The panelists all agreed that this recent integration of social and mobile is beginning of a new computing platform, mainly due to the capabilities introduced by the iOS. Killer apps on this new platform will need to incorporate both a social element and an entertainment element in order to survive.

According to Pishevar, SGN is “Working on things where you’re placing your phone in the real world and seeing 3D characters walking down the street, games where you have a garden in your actual physical yard that you’re actually tending to and it’s growing and you can see it on the iPhone.“

Decrem elaborates “There’s no difference to me between playing Tapulous on the iPhone and using my Starbucks card in the morning, wanting to get 15 stars so I can get a free coffee … “

Real life rewards for online behavior are a force to be reckoned with, and will increasingly become more prevalent as developers continue to experience success with them. Yelp for example, saw their usage skyrocket when they incorporated the Check-in element. “You’re checking in with a physical card instead of a mobile. We haven’t invented anything new.”

Says Priebatsch “We are bringing one very new thing to the game framework, the open graph API. Social traffics in connections, games traffic in influence. By applying that to the real world, we are building a platform that traffics in motivations and rewards.”

In what new ways can these game mechanics can be applied in the future?

“We’re really in the first or second inning on the mobile side,” says Pishevar, “The level of creativity and fun that’s coming is incredible.”

Should businesses rush to apply social mechanics? “It’s just natural evolution,” says DeCrem. Businesses developing a product should ask themselves, How about if you can connect with your friends? How about if we make it fun?

Piveshar’s one criticism is that the gaming industry could do so much more. “Because of the social graph many have cut corners of quality in order to monetize; We’ve got hypergrowth. Lots of millions have been created and its time to give something back.”

Acker brought up the idea of games that cure cancer as one way social gaming can actually benefit society, referring to HopeLab’sRe-Mission and Zamzee, “It doesn’t matter how many brochures you show a kid, he’s not going to want to [go to chemo]. But when you build an avatar called Roxy, have her shooting the cancer cells, and then when she feels feel weak you go get her a chemo tap … It’s incredibly powerful.”


Elements of gaming engender powerful emotions; Chemotherapy can become a positive thing and cancer becomes something you can beat. And that’s pretty formidable.

• The Smartphone: A Shackle Once More
• Cascaad Personalizes Your News Stream In Real Time, Raises Funding

This post was written by guest contributor Leila Janah, the CEO of the nonprofit outsourced services firm Samasource. Leila continues to argue with me over whether or not pure capitalism can solve what ails us. I tend to take a Randian view of the world. Janah argues that capitalism can often lead to evil, and points to the massive Taiwanese firm Foxconn as an example of capitalism going wrong. That’s certainly a crowd pleaser, but I think most of the problems with capitalism stem from government regulation. You can watch my recent video interview with Janah here. In any event, Samasource is a fascinating experiment and is already helping the world become a more pleasant place to be.

Sixty-three percent of the Fortune 500, and more than half of all American businesses, are incorporated in Delaware. The state’s laws protect corporate directors and enable them to focus on the bottom line. Traditionally, that has meant maximizing profits and shareholder value.

But a new trend is emerging to counter Delaware’s influence on American corporate policy, and it’s pretty thrilling for those of us in the social enterprise sector. In April, Maryland became the first state to allow entrepreneurs to form Benefit Corporations. Also known as “triple-bottom line” businesses (so named for their consideration of people, planet, and profit), B Corps now include over 300 companies representing $1.1B in revenue, including Amazon competitor Better World Books and GoodGuide, a site that rates consumer products for safety, environmental impact, and social responsibility. B Corporation, the nonprofit behind the legislation, is growing in influence — in the organization’s hometown of Philadelphia, B Corps now receive tax incentives.

Benefit Corporations aren’t the only newfangled legal structures available to mission-driven entrepreneurs. Several years ago, Vermont created Low-Profit Limited Liability Corporations, or L3Cs (Vermont, bless those hippies, also approved Benefit Corporations in May). Michigan, Utah, Wyoming, Illinois, and New York followed suit.

I can hear some of you scoffing. How can a business optimize across multiple types of return? How can one measure social and environmental impact consistently across the full range of businesses? Is Adam Smith turning in his grave?

The notion of multiple bottom lines emerged in the 1980s, after major environmental catastrophes like Exxon Valdez and the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal made it clear that some firms were not counting the true environmental costs of doing business on their balance sheets. Negative environmental externalities went largely unregulated, and activists realized that business leaders were a more likely source of change than government. The first crop of these companies included Ben and Jerry’s, whose founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield famously donated 7.5% of pre-tax profit to community projects, and Dame Anita Roddick’s The Body Shop, whose “Trade Not Aid” and Greenpeace campaigns built her a reputation for business ethics.

Today, there are at least 25 different approaches to measuring social and environmental impact at the firm level, ranging from Fair Trade labeling systems that focus on living and working conditions for suppliers to Jed Emerson’s popular Social Return on Investment method, and the companies that use them have access to new pools of capital. Led by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Impact Investing Network includes 30 socially conscious investors including funds like Jeff Skoll’s Capricorn Investment Group and TIAA-CREF.

This activity around social business, and social capital markets more broadly, is encouraging, but highlights a central problem: in the absence of a single standard for measuring social and environmental returns, regulatory agencies can’t build effective incentives to encourage companies to adopt them. Optimizing for multiple variables is notoriously challenging; even when leaders unambiguously express their commitment to social and environmental goals by, for example, modifying their corporate mission statements, they face major tradeoffs. Prior to the advent of Benefit Corporations, people and planet took a back seat to profits. Ten years ago, Ben & Jerry’s sold to Unilever — according to Will Patten, a former executive there, Cohen and Greenfield wanted to retain control of the company but could have been sued by shareholders for not selling to an entity willing to pay well above the company’s stock price.

Under Maryland’s new law, the Bens and Jerrys of the future are free to compromise profits for the pursuit of vaguely defined “public benefit,” which includes things like preserving the environment and improving human health. The directors of Benefit Corporations are required to file a “Benefit Report” to shareholders each year, and are required to consider the effects of their actions not only on shareholders, but also on employees, customers, and, notably, suppliers.

In the wake of worker suicides at FoxConn and the recent discovery of $1 trillion worth of lithium, copper and iron in Afghanistan, is the tech world ready for B Corps?

• Whrrl 3 Wants To Kill Farmville. Not Foursquare. Not Gowalla….
• Tweets In Buzz: It’s Complicated — Well, Maybe Political

Nearly everyone has something to say about BP’s oil spill, and from a public relations perspective, the company is floundering. Both its stock price and brand value have taken a deepwater dive, and it is struggling to make its own voice heard.

When you Google “BP PR” or “BP public relations,” the top organic result is @BPGlobalPR, a parody account on Twitter with more than 175,000 followers. In contrast, BP’s official account, @BP_America, has only 15,000 followers.  The satirical @BPGlobalPR is dominating the online conversation. It is an object lesson in how social media can shape and control a company’s message during a crisis.  The fake account has gone viral for its scathing impersonations of the company with tweets like:

We are doing everything we can to stop the information leaks in the gulf: http://ow.ly/22XTw #bpcares (tweet)

Congrats to BP’s Mother of the Year 2010! It’s just oil people! Take the kids out and enjoy the beach! http://ow.ly/232ua (tweet)

Lightning struck one of our ships! Come on Planet Earth, what did we ever do to you?!? (tweet)

It’s hurricane season now. Don’t worry! We’ve planned for that just as well as we’ve planned for everything else! (tweet)

Some people think it is real.  BP initially wanted to shut down the sardonic account, but Twitter’s policy allows for parody accounts, so long as they don’t mislead or deceive. BP demanded the impostor rewrite his bio, and he did, but not without commentary: “We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 52 days.” It’s since reverted to the original “This page exists to get BP’s message and mission statement out into the twitterverse!”

Meanwhile, anybody can start a Twitter account.  Companies can no longer rely on buying media time to spread their message though well-produced commercials, especially when the disaster your company is responsible for is ongoing.   It doesn’t help when more candid comments like Hayward’s “I’d like my life back” cast doubt on the polished message’s sincerity.  Someone on Twitter or elsewhere on the Web  will find ways to challenge the message, as @BPGlobalPR is doing.  Even mainstream news organizations that are watched by non-tweeters have reported the buzz around the satire account.

Of course, BP’s attempts to bolster its image go well beyond TV spots.  BP also bought paid search terms on several search engines to promote their official site. All of these PR efforts, totalling $50 million by some estimates, are predictable moves to stay engaged in the social media services where BP is being most criticized. The company is using many tools, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube to spread their message. Satire aside, independent groups have set up their own sites, like BP Complaints, which chronicles oil spill news and activism.

The problem isn’t a lack of involvement, it’s a lack of credibility. No amount of PR can help it at this point until it stops the leak and starts cleaning up the ocean.  But while BP struggles to find its story, others are telling it for them.

• ‘Fast Company’ Influence Project Proves Online Influencers Have No…
• You Know Where Else It’s Hard To Delete Your Account? Mahalo

With regard to his recent spat with Facebook we don’t exactly see eye-to-eye with Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis. But this morning, we did when an incident showed just how hard it is to delete your Facebook profile. But after reading that post, someone brought up a very good point. You know where else it’s hard to delete your account? Mahalo.

Seriously, try to figure it out. You won’t be able to because apparently there is no option to do it on the site itself. In fact, according to these two pages you have to email someone at Mahalo to do it. At least Facebook has a (albeit hidden) button!

You know what else you apparently can’t do from Mahalo? Get your data out. This is another thing Calacanis has been bitching about nonstop for the past several weeks. Though it’s undoubtedly much more complicated than he makes it out to be on Facebook, it shouldn’t be nearly as hard to get your social data out of Mahalo. And yet, unless I’m missing it, there is no big export button (which he has called for Facebook to create) there either.

While we’re on the subject, what’s with all the Facebook integration on Mahalo? There’s a giant Facebook Connect login at the top of every page — and each page features one-button sharing to Facebook. If Calacanis is so against it, shouldn’t he put his startup where his mouth is?

• WhitePages Now Lets You Control Your Own Listings
• Social Gaming Execs Discuss Growth, Monetization, And The Future Of…