If you have checked a leaderboard on Foursquare recently, or compared your Twitter follower count with your friends, then you know how prestige works to motivate users to participate. In a guest post at paidContent, Ty Ahmad-Taylor suggests that media companies – and other digital businesses, can use prestige to actually drive revenues.
It boils down to creating a venue for users to move upward through some game or exercise and then be able to tout that progress to their social graph. One additional dimension is users being able to see how they stack up against the general public, a concept known as the leaderboard. … The rise of prestige as a new form of currency has ramifications for businesses facing decline like print or broadcast.
Suggestions range from prediction games for stocks, sports and entertainment (eg. box office results). What about weather? Is there someone in your community who could more accurately predict tomorrow’s high temperature than your own staff (or service)?
I wrote a proposal a couple years ago for a Knight News Challenge grant (rejected!) based on social gaming for news. The idea was to reward users for finding and submitting news and give them points and rank them against other users. Would there be more reception for such an idea today – especially if we used the badge meme instead of boring old points? “Internet famous” is a powerful motivation for users. And local media companies need to see the opportunities it presents for loyalty, branding and – just maybe – revenues.
No related posts.
weather?
this is a joke, right?
one day last week, everywhere i went (gas station, grocery, etc.) people were saying “they say we're in for alot of snow”. the only thing those folks got was a snowjob by their local “expert”. i was looking at a radar out of indy that is scaled beautifully for me (encompasses detroit and two college towns where i have interests) and i could not see what the heck those weather people were seeing in the form of “alot of snow”. i even asked a county plow driver who was dropping salt that afternoon and he confirmed my suspicion- “the guys back at the yard say it's all bullshyt”.
it probably drove ratings, but kills your prestige.
days later i wasn't surprised to see the fine folks of boston were treated to the same bs story– then the stations had to trot out the excuses… and someone to take the bullet for the lousy “weather team” call.
all f'in hype!!!
i'll keep my indy radar, thank you.
i'd suggest digging around on the internet for a recently published piece on the perils of referring to “driving your audience”.
It's not a joke if “they” don't know what they're talking about – and you do. Wouldn't it be great if you could share those insights with others? (And get prestige in return?)
please don't take it personal.
my “this is a joke” assumes weathercasters have several years of specialized training so they DO know what they are talking about. you don't think that the promotions people pressure the weather people to spin thereby “driving audience”?
yeah, driving them away.
no, i really have no interest in sharing insights with anyone other than my two college kids who have benefited from that same indianapolis radar as far back as this past summer. i'll settle for the prestige i get in keeping them informed.
like they say- you can fool some of the people all of the time. i'd say that's the demo that relies on tv news/weather these days.
the title of your piece is 'can “prestige” be a business model for local media?' i say not until they get rid of the “driving audience” mindset (or the entire promotions dept.)as part of that business model.
WHO ARE YOU KIDDING?
Now get back to work, the water cooler's leased.
Your Knight News Challenge grant idea sounds like Windy Citizen in Chicago.
http://www.windycitizen.com