Super Bees: serious business

In each company there were always Kulibins, Michurins, and now in the modern office there will definitely find its own mayor (or even more than one), a photoblogger, a writer and ... well, who just isn't. But if earlier people satisfied their spiritual needs in their free time, today, if you do not let a person do a “check-in” with a water cooler, then most likely it will hurt his feelings and the need for self-expression.



It was this relationship that was opened and disassembled in pieces at the IBM Center for Social Business, where an experiment was conducted with the participation of 30,000 employees in the corporate business network called Social Blue , which in many ways influenced the development of a commercial product - IBM Connections . The purpose of this experiment is extremely simple: it was necessary to prove that network members would be more willing to participate in the creation and distribution of content, if you provide them with a game promotion, as is done, for example, in Foursquare .

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In general, the success of Foursquare itself says first of all that people, in general, like the senseless (in a practical sense) badges, titles and rewards that they receive for their contributions to social networks. But since it is difficult to prove this in practice (or, rather, it is difficult to make it obvious), IBM went the opposite way - removed game mechanics from networks, and what would you think? The decrease in user activity was so dramatic and noticeable that after a while almost no one uploaded photos, did not share statuses, and did not write comments.



When IBM launched Social Blue, registered users competed in points gained: 5 points per photo, 15 per comment. The most active members of the network appeared at the top of the rating, which made them spend even more time to participate. The one who was not active enough and earned few points received the title “New Bee” (New Bee). Above him were the worker bees (Worker Bee), busy bees (Busy Bee) and, on top, the super bees (Siper Bee), who scored 2000 or more points.



After 10 months of work in swarm mode (bees, of course), the IBM research team completely removed the rewards and titles system. No super bees - no points.



As a result, activity within the network almost stopped: “There was a certain percentage of people who were motivated solely by the reward system,” says Jennifer Tom-Santelli, one of the developers of Social Blue, who later took part in writing a detailed report on the work done.



The lesson that Social Blue members and IBM researchers learned from this? Never take anything, even imaginary achievements, statuses and ranks from your employees. This greatly demotivates and reduces the need to create, and disseminate, information and opinions.



At the same time, as Tom-Santelli points out, one cannot overly rely on the game elements: “We clearly saw that at a certain point even the glasses stopped working. After some time, when participants have already developed the habit of sharing content for points, they reduce their own activity, so the overall activity curve all the same falls over time. There is a peak and there is a recession after it, which cannot be stopped without changing the rules. ” Here, Jennifer adds: "However, people who had a lot of points, still manifest themselves more actively than others."



IBM Connections has long been not the only product that offers businesses of any level and size to build their own social intranet, but so far none of the developers of such software has applied game mechanics in their own development, or considering that games have no place in the corporate environment, or fear that employees will start to “play” more instead of “working”. All this, however, can be questioned.



The fact remains: quite a bit of time will pass before social tools for business begin to transform, closer and closer to their “free” fellows and, without any doubt, “gamification” (a transcription from gamification, a term explaining the use of game mechanics in social and not only tools) will contribute to the spread of networks in the business, but the most important thing is that each participant of the network will not take part in the life of a virtual society, but with pleasure.



In the meantime, we see this only in advertising: