#zyngasxsw brimming with behavioral observations
What’s the most sharable word on facebook?
It’s “sex.”
The second most is “facebook.”
“like” is a distant third.
In the talk about what makes social successful, presented by zynga, offered a treasure trove of data-driven insights about peoples behavior.
Aside from what we know, that there has to be ways to represent what’s unique about you, it gets way more interesting.
For one, the people that just watch the updates and never play are who fuel people to play and pay: because of social capital. That’s what gets people to play social games too much. And when you want to play too much, that’s when you have to pay.
Another great story was with frontierville. It went viral because testing showed that people liked to move the sheep.
So they added in the option to post moving the sheep to your wall. The comments and clicks to the game skyrocketed. That resulted in appearing at the top of everyones news feed. Even more clicks.
Why?
Because to adults, the icon of the woman and the sheep were in a sexually ambiguous position in the icon. All the comments Were along the lines of “what is she doing with that sheep?”
So they redesigned all of their frontierville icons to include innuendo that kids would never get, but gets incredibly high involvement from adults.
Socializing is everything to zynga, because it’s everything to the players. They want to share almost every game interaction, and zynga needs to enable that to be successful.
On games: Give people satisfying interactions. People like to fill five minutes of boredom. Give them satisfying experiences that fit.
Play asynchronously. Let people play together without having to play at the same time. There’s too much friction in forcing people to play the same game at the same time.
Have fun!
Okay, so what does that mean?
1- series of interesting choices
2- recognizing and learning patterns Our brains are made to do this. To a fault.
Turns out it’s not only distracting, but keeps your brain more active. (me: crossword anyone?)
3- surprise and delight: laughter
Prototype an idea: actually build it!
Play it over and over. Never stop revising.
Show it to more people, revise more.
Keep playing and revising!
Things to try: More choices. Let the player have fun.
Make choices matter more
Build in a story and make me the hero.
Hide patterns I can learn over time.
Create more surprise, suspense, and humor.
Add another social element, like cooperation.
RE: Inventing Email
Very cool to see Chad inspired by my Email is Killing Your Business article (http://su.pr/3XymN9) to sketch his own solutions:
Lets face it, email sucks as it is known today. While valiant efforts are being made by Google to re-invent online communication, the fact remains that there is a large user base of desktop based email clients. The problem with email is that it’s very top down, meaning that forces it’s self on you. It’s not natural. Emails get lost because of this.
Source: chadhietala
Very nice of Craig to include me on this impressive list of panel proposals for SXSW. By all means, give it a look!
Thanks again Craig. Speaking at C+M still one of my highlights this year.
SXSW 2010 will be here before we know it and the panel picker process for the event has already begun (and ends this coming Friday 9/2). While I encourage you to vote for Colle+McVoy’s two proposed panel topics, the focus here is what panels I recommend voting for. Check out the three below and let me know what you think. What are your favorite panel topics for SXSW?
- How Screenwriting and Film Theory Creates Enchanting Websites
Michael Leis came to speak at C+M last December and gave a similar presentation. He is an amazing presenter and the content is second-to-none.
- Practical Digital Anthropology: Getting to Know Your Users
I work closely with Account Planning and appreciate the idea of “digital anthropology.” Will be especially interesting with a social media tie-in.
- Turning a Real-Life Event Into an Online Experience
I love the idea of sharing free information on the Web. Since I’m working on how C+M can do this better, the TED panel should be spot-on.
The brand hub-and-spoke coming together
Although many people have talked about the branded hub, or microsite being dead, I think it’s moving in a new, more valuable space as curator of the many spokes that a company must have out there to reach out on the Web and mobile devices.
The brands that are reaching out now need a place to curate this effort. I liken it to sewing: where putting the needle through the fabric one way (social and distributed channels) is one part of the stitch.
But now you have to come back through, integrate these technologies and complete the stitch — the information they represent about the brand, the people who interact with the brand (both internally and externally) — back into a context that is owned by the brand.
Ken Burnaby did a great job collecting (along with the readers) a number of large brand sites that are already making headway in actively, programmatically, making the brand site a hub of all their online activity.
No, this still isn’t a place where troves of people are going to visit, though I think you’d be surprised at how many do. But strategically it can be incredibly important and valuable for the brand.
Proof
Both brand proof “look at what we’re doing” and social proof “look at the people at our company and among our customers who are taking part in the cause of our brand.” Now the brand site can really be a living reflection of the work.
What’s next
A big problem in many campaigns is that they only allow for so much interaction. With a hub, you can give a user in any social or distributed network an easy “next step” into discovering (and you can’t underestimate the power of discovery), what other content you have to offer, and where else they can have access to it.
Acknowledging the brand as software developer
It’s all really about the fact that the old addage of “We’re not in the [enter technology here] business.” Which continues to linger in brands that need to start really taking on and developing software solutions, online or on the desktop. But that’s like saying that coke isn’t in the vending machine business, or the trucking business.
Software design and development is a logistical expense for communicating effectively and evocatively with an audience. It’s not going away, and I don’t think it’s an expense that can be carried forever from marketing or PR: two industries not known for taking on these deeper kinds of endeavors.
More to come on this, just wanted to get these initial thoughts down.
Somewhere between Twitter and my 
