“Gamification” seems to be the up and coming buzz word. You may recall that in April, I covered Empire Avenue in a post about the gamification of social media. Now, Google is in the news (literally) with a gamification project of their own, and I think it has some potential.
Let’s explore why.
This week Google announced the launch of their Google News Badges. Google heralded the launch with the following description:
The U.S. Edition of Google News now lets you collect private, sharable badges for your favorite topics. The more articles you read on Google News, the more your badges level up: you can reach Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and finally Ultimate. Keep your badges to yourself, or show them off to your friends.
You’ll probably feel like the badge adoption seems familiar; after all, Foursquare made this a central part of their service.