The dreaded ‘G’ word: Gamification

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I’ve been spending a portion of the week at the Casual Connect conference in downtown Seattle, a three-day extravaganza which highlights everything you could possibly imagine about the casual games business. This year, one of the hot topics of discussion has been “gamification,” the concept of rewarding users with virtual coins, badges or more for participating… Read More…

Rewind: Keith Smith, BigDoor CEO, on the economics and future of gamification

Keith Smith in the KIRO studios (Erynn Rose photo)

Our guest this past week on the GeekWire Podcast was Keith Smith, CEO of BigDoor, a Seattle company bringing the principles of video games to the world of online publishing, with badges, leaderboards and other rewards for users of traditional websites. He talked about the company’s new deal with Major League Baseball, the underlying economies of… Read More…

BigDoor ‘gamifies’ America’s pastime, strikes deal with MLB

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Baseball already has pennants. Now, it is getting badges too — at least of the digital variety. Seattle startup BigDoor and MLB Advanced Media — the interactive arm of Major League Baseball — today announced that visitors to MLB.com can earn and collect player badges as part of an online rewards program powered by BigDoor…. Read More…

Amazon.com’s real problem isn’t the outage, it’s the communication

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Guest Commentary: Like many companies running on Amazon’s Web Services, BigDoor has been affected by the AWS outage today.  And like most startups, we are braced for bad stuff to happen, and we do our best to learn from the painful stuff.  We spent a better part of the day in constant contact via Twitter,… Read More…

CPMs or CPCs? Nope, BigDoor has its eye on the CPQ: Cost Per Quest

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You may have heard of CPMs or CPCs. But Seattle startup BigDoor wants to start a movement around another online advertising acronym. It’s called the CPQ or Cost Per Quest. Say what? Keith Smith, who founded BigDoor in 2009, unveiled the program today and he thinks it will redefine how online media companies interact with… Read More…

Bobber Interactive brings gamification to personal finance for the Facebook set

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Gamification is the hot buzzword these days. And Seattle startup Bobber Interactive is looking to capitalize on the trend, bringing game mechanics to the world of personal finance. The company — led by Eric Eastman, John Bito and Scott Dodson — today announced that it closed a first round of funding, with participation from Peak6… Read More…