Last week, Facebook joined the social media craze of “checking in,” with its new service called Places. The move indicates an increasingly popular trend, pioneered by services like Four Square. Whether at a famous historical landmark or their local Starbucks, people use location check-ins to let friends know where they are and earn badges for covering more ground.
Some think the next phase in the check in revolution is coming soon to a couch near you. Entertainment could be the next big thing that draws users to check in and share what they’re doing with others. Services like GetGlue, Miso, and Philo encourage you to share what you’re watching and engage with people doing the same. Besides the social networking incentive to interact with fellow fans of your favorite shows, these applications offer tokens and badges for every time you keep up with the Kardashians or tune in to see what Snooki will do next on Jersey Shore.
Checking in while watching TV sounds like fun, but the question remains: What will it mean for the direction of social media? With badges and rewards, social media is tapping into what many gamers find so appealing: virtual symbols of achievement that show where you’ve been and what sort of character you are.
When playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft (WoW), the community is equally if not more important than the actual gameplay. A WoW player forges his identity partially based on items he collects. These items determine his character’s appearance and others in the community can learn about his character from them. (You may remember the Mr. T commercials that showed his character, a night elf with his signature mohawk). A character may carry a sword, for example, that can only be obtained by defeating a certain monster in a certain forest of the online world. The item serves as a badge of honor, letting other players know where the character has been and what he achieved while there. They may ask how the player found it, whether or not he could lead them there, or even accuse him of being a hacker who obtained the item without actually completing the quest required to find it.
Social media check-in badges serve the same function for their users. They invite discussion (“I’ve never been to that restaurant, is it good?!”), debate (“season one of this show was definitely better than season two”), and build community (sounds like a cool place, I’ll meet you there!). Look for services like Foursquare and Facebook’s Places to continue taking cues from the gaming world and for further attempts to make everyday life seem more fun based on a gaming model. If I were playing EpicWin on the iPhone, for example, I would score points for finishing this blog post!
Add Comment