Wait a minute? Facebook is wildly successful, I hear you say. You are right. It is wildly successful. It was built on multiple game dynamics and mechanics but they got something horribly wrong. Let us first walk through the top game dynamics in play.
- Friends – How often have you felt compelled to accumulate as many friends on FB when you first sign on? It is a natural response behaviour to a social game. Your friend count reflects your social status and that is important.
- Likes – This is social sharing at its very best. The Like button is a game mechanic that focuses on the user’s innate need for social validation. It is designed for the explorer, the socializer and the Achiever. Achievers count the number of likes. Socializers use that as a way to discuss content. Explorers let you know they were there and read that.
- Followers – Social status with friends starts to matter less when everybody reaches a certain number. Facebook released the followers to add additional bragging rights. This meant you have a clear differentiator from the average Joe/Jane.
So where did Facebook mess up?
Recently, in a bid to increase revenue, Facebook altered their newsfeed algorithm. You no longer received information from everybody but from only those that you engaged with most. This also meant that your posts now went out to only 10% of your audience. For most people, that is about 50 friends.
Imagine the dynamic now. Any post you make has a maximum of 20 likes or shares at most. Your posts are no longer viral. The kick you received from social feedback, from friends, from the Facebook ecosystem has diminished just as the great content has now diminished on your news feed. The equivalent is to show you only 10% of your farm in Farmville. You have a 100 acre farm but here just take care of 10 acres. A real world equivalent would be, you have 1 lakh in the Bank but you can only access 10,000 at any time.
Guess what does that do to a game?
Sudarsan Ravi
Who am I? – I am a Rodinhoods fanboy. When I am not on this forum, I spend time building a enterprise gamification company where we apply game mechanics to business areas making them fun. Our first product is RippleHire where we are transforming the way talent is sourced in the enterprise.
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