Two new Web services want to bring the equivalent of frequent-flier
miles to everyday online activities, rewarding you for merely browsing
the Internet and sharing links with friends.
The services, which launched this week at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, take slightly different approaches. But both have the same larger purpose: to help websites get visitors to stick around longer. It's a twist on the "check in" model pioneered by Foursquare, a mobile social network that offers virtual badges and other signs of status to people who regularly patronize physical-world locations.
One of the new Web companies, Badgeville, helps Web publishers build a "game dynamic" into their sites so that users earn points whenever they view or comment on a page. A publisher can also choose to dole out points to people who share material from the site on Facebook or Twitter--with more points allocated if their friends click the links back to the site. Badgeville, based in Palo Alto, California, has signed up 10 publishers, including Comcast Sports, the website of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the tech news site TheNextWeb.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Technology Review: Scoring Points with Everyday Browsing
Author: Tom Simonite
