Posts Tagged ‘incentives’

getupp is a location-based commitment service. Commit to activities that require your presence at a specific location at a certain time, for example, going to the gym after work or being home on time for dinner. getupp verifies and shares whether you keep or break such commitments. Open the getupp iPhone app at the right location at the right time, and your commitment is completed. But if you fail to show up, your commitment is broken, and your failure is automatically shared with your friends on Facebook.

You can find all the information at http://www.getupp.com/

Everyone loves loyalty points. But it’s often a pain to get them because different companies all have their own programs that require you to remember numbers. Topguest’s goal is to unify that experience by letting you earn points simply by checking-in on social networks like Foursquare and Facebook. And now they’re adding a new layer to the mix: Instagram photos.

Yes, beginning today when the integration goes fully live, you’ll be able to earn reward points at venues around the world simply by taking a picture and sharing it on Instagram. This may mean hotel points, air miles, or other benefits at the over 10,000 places Topguest currently works with. All you have to do is link up Topguest to your Instagram account (via their new API) and make sure your picture is geotagged at the venue.

You can read the whole blog entry at http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/27/topguest-instagram/

Goalfinch is a goal setting tool built on a principle that economists have known for centuries: incentives matter. If there’s a goal you want to accomplish, you have the best chance of succeeding when there are incentives in place to reward you for getting it done. Goalfinch helps you create incentives to accomplish your goals.

You start by defining a goal, picking a deadline (all good, measurable goals have deadlines), and inviting some of your Facebook friends to verify whether or not you accomplish your goal. Then you make a financial contribution to Goalfinch. This money is “on the line” until you either reach or fail to reach the goal. It’s an additional incentive to motivate you to go out and get it done.

When you reach your goal, your friends should sign in to Goalfinch and confirm that you have succeeded. By default, Goalfinch won’t count your goal as successful until all the friends you invited come to the site and do this. If you succeed before the deadline, congratulations! Goalfinch will send your contribution back to you. If you fail, however, Goalfinch will donate the money to a charitable or non-profit organization (you can select one while defining your goal).

You also have the option to distribute your contribution proportionally: For each friend that confirms you’ve completed your goal, we’ll return a portion of your money to you, up to the full amount. For example, if you invite three friends to verify your goal but only two of them confirm that you complete it, you’ll get two thirds of your money back. The rest will be donated.

You can find all the information at http://goalfinch.com

EmmaActive is a new platform that rewards people who take the time to identify and tag products on photographs. This system is open to just any person who is willing to give it a try, and both site owners and advertisers are greatly benefited by it. The former make money whenever people tag a product on any photo displayed on their sites, whereas advertisers are getting a higher-quality of inbound traffic (IE, people who are keener on buying anything than those who are surfing the Web aimlessly).

The real strength of this image advertising platform is how it lets people who visit a site looking for specific products buy them directly by merely clicking on the tags that are featured.

EmmaActive means that no more will anybody have to look for the best spot to buy anything they saw and liked when browsing the Web. This service turns every image that is tagged into something that can be purchased. And since people are being rewarded for taking their time to tag products, everything comes full circle.

Read more: http://www.killerstartups.com/eCommerce/emmaactive-com-tag-products-on-images

Representing achievements as badges or trophies is a standard practice in online gaming. Awarding badges has also become a key ingredient in “gamifying” online social media experiences. Social systems such as Foursquare, StackOverflow, and Wikipedia have popularized badges as a way of engaging and motivating users. In this paper the authors deconstruct badges and present five social psychological functions for badges in social media contexts: goal setting, instruction, reputation, status/affirmation, and group identification. They argue that future research should further explore these five functions and their application in specific contexts.

You can get the paper at http://research.yahoo.com/node/3469