

Introducing Google News Badges - anigbrowl
http://www.google.com/support/News/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1237021

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rkalla
The study of game theory and incentives has become a big area of study in
marketing. I worked in an experimental economics lab for a few years and a lot
of the software we wrote and experiments we ran focused on little incentives
like this for engagement.

NOTE: I realize this has probably been going on since the dawn of time, I am
not suggesting I was working on something no one else had thought of, we are
just starting to see it take-shape really specifically now in online services
as they play bigger and bigger roles where it was previously absent.

It looks silly and insulting, but it works (on most people).

Look at Stack Exchange, I love when I login and see a new badge alert across
the top... I have no idea why, but I suddenly feel like I care about that site
about 15% more than I do other equivalent resources. I feel like my
contributions matter so I care to contribute there as opposed to someplace
else.

Look at the concept of Achievements on XBox and Trophies on PSN... the idea
works, it creates this false sense of accomplishment and while 10% of the
population might not care and might ignore it, I imagine 50%-60% are effected
by it in some subtle positive way (like me) and the remaining 30% are actually
motivated by it to do more of whatever caused them to "win".

I think this is an unexpectedly playful way for Google to dabble in incentives
inside their products. If Google News traffic goes up, I imagine we'll see
badges as part of our core Google profiles within the next year or two unified
across all their properties (especially Google+)

My guess is that like our identities, the "badges" on your public profile
(Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.) will become something the big social
networks move into; trying to keep you "building" on their network as opposed
to another.

It works somewhat for Xbox 360/PS3, it was bound to bleed over into other
arenas.

ASIDE: There was a startup about a year ago that specialized in exactly this:
badges for your website. Golden Door, Red Door... something like that. I
wonder if they'll see a big upswing in business as people get more interested
in the idea.

~~~
piotrSikora
Last year at DICE, Jesse Schell gave _amazing_ presentation on the topic:
[http://www.g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-
th...](http://www.g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-
presentation/)

~~~
rkalla
Piotr,

That was a brilliant talk, thanks for linking that.

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borski
Why is everything about gamification nowadays? Do I really care about some
badge telling me or others how "well versed" or "well read" I am about a
particular topic? Shouldn't that knowledge be attained through conversation,
instead?

~~~
methodin
Or you could look at it as a form of addiction similar to how WOW and other
MMORPG games have you do mundane tasks to get a reward which is in and of
itself meaningless. The more they can get you to read articles the more it
benefits them. For some people it takes incentives other than knowledge to
perform the act of learning.

~~~
astrofinch
The way I look at it, if a technique works for getting myself to learn stuff
I'm happy to take advantage of it. E.g. if fantasizing about using obscure
physics knowledge casually in a conversation is going to help me learn
physics, and I want to learn physics, I'll fantasize away.

I don't see much utility in reading the news though. I'd much rather see this
on a video lecture site.

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robtoo
I'm actually impressed by how ridiculous, patronising and insulting an idea
this is.

I even went hunting to find out if this was an old April Fools' Joke getting
some new publicity.

~~~
Tichy
I liked the original idea of PMOG (now <http://thenethernet.com/>) which seems
similar: you would get points for exploring various sites of the internet and
level up your character by doing so. What interested me was maybe some kind of
feedback loop for correcting my self image. Perhaps I think I like to read
lots of highly intellectual stuff, but my character would turn out to hang out
on celebrity gossip sites a lot. Presumably then I could try to take counter
action by reading more intellectual stuff, correcting my self image/alter ego.

In the end I never played, first because of privacy concerns, then because it
didn't work with my browser.

I suppose those news badges are kind of the same thing, just not presented in
an equally appealing way. So instead of making me think "yay, they made
reading news even more fun", I think "they are trying to exploit a weakness of
my stone age brain to make me do even more work for them for free". Yuk.

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losvedir
Interesting. I can actually see some use to having little badges on your
Google profile indicating what topics you're interested in. I've stumbled upon
a lot of Google+ profiles because of an interesting post, and these badges
could be a nice quantitative way to see if I might be interested in following
them.

I wish it worked off Google Reader, though, rather than News.

~~~
evan_
I'm sure everyone remembers this april fool's joke from a few years back:

<http://www.google.com/googlereader/reader-advantage.html>

I keep meaning to sew my gold patch on my backpack...

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ilamont
It's being marketed as something that helps people track articles and find new
content, share content with friends, and spark conversations, but it's also
framed in terms of earning/leveling up. I think there is a bit of disconnect
there. People who appreciate the game-like elements may not get so much value
from the discovery/social features (and vice versa).

If the badges result in significantly higher usage of Google News, some large
news organizations will feel threatened. Making an aggregator more attractive
means fewer people starting their search for news on CNN, BBC, Fox,
nytimes.com and large local news sites like Boston.com. On the other hand,
smaller/niche publishers that are featured on Google News will welcome more
traffic.

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kissickas
I was awaiting their big Google News announcement and really hope that this
isn't it. It doesn't even incorporate the custom news sections I've already
added. Furthermore, clicking on the suggested Politics section brings up an
article from an outlet I specifically asked for less of yesterday- I'll stick
with my normal Google News, thanks. I'll play Minecraft when I need a game.

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plainOldText
Off topic > I really enjoyed the background song in the video :) I'm wondering
who creates all these Google presentational videos and soundtracks.

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radicaldreamer
This seems like a way to get people to start sending their web history to
Google- in addition to search history.

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dannyr
I bet this has something to do with the social news reader app that Google
will be releasing soon.

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xelipe
What is this, Google people rank for users' attention span on a given topic?

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RK
Is this just to encourage people to stay logged-in/cookies on?

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jamesgagan
It does look like you need to have web history enabled in order to use it...

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bugsy
Huh. This is a pretty incoherent design concept.

