Gamification at SXSW 2013 Recap

Sunday was the concluding day of the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival taking place in Austin Texas. SXSW is a two-week annual conference that allows start-ups, bands and filmmakers to showcase their wares and hopefully link up with brands, music labels and distribution houses respectively.

Over the past few years, the “Interactive” (or digital) component has soared combining a different kind of four p’s to inspire technological innovation: over 5,000 panels, presentations, previews and parties.

Gamification was a significant topic this year, with Nintendo even sponsoring a new “Gaming” dedicated expo for new game-oriented product launches.  More than eight panels featured gamification as the main theme and a plethora of start-ups integrated game theory into their business models.

One of the most famous and successful examples out of SXSW featuring a gamification model is Foursquare, which debuted in 2009. Foursquare let’s users “check-in” to places (bars, restaurants, events) to broadcast to their followers about where they are and what they are doing. It currently has over 30 million users worldwide and over 3 billion check-ins.

One of the darling’s of this year’s SXSW Interactive Conference is actually a take on Foursquare, but with a feminine touch: Posse.

Previously a music and concert ticket service based in Australia, Posse just moved to the US and relaunched as a web and mobile social discovery service. Like Raved, Posse solicits its users to recommend various venues – from shops and restaurants to service businesses – but instead endorsing as you go, Posse users build 'playlists' of their favorite spots, taking a cue from its musical roots. Another spin is that certain elements of Posse were designed primarily for women. Why? Before relaunching, founder Rebekah Campbell did some research on Foursquare, finding that it's usage skewed male (about 70% of the 100 users polled), and that the mechanics of 'checking-in' resonate more with guys than girls. To fill the void she sees left by Foursquare in the female market, Ms. Campbell built a different sort of game mechanic and competitive features into Posse that she hopes will resonate more with female users, such as the ability to earn points and rewards, which are tied to the proactive creation of virtual streets of favorite places that reflect users' tastes and status – as opposed to the perhaps more male-oriented behavior marking one's territory with check-ins. (http://adage.com/article/special-report-sxsw/startups-impressed-sxsw/240334/)

What we can conclude from SXSW 2013 is that with past and present darlings of the conference being centered on the application of gamification, we can expect to see more panels, presentations, previews and parties focused on the topic at SXSW 2014 and future conferences to come.

More on SXSW: http://sxsw.com/
More on Foursquare: https://foursquare.com/about/
More on Posse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0sUBjIzYv6k