Gamification on media sites: how it is implemented, what tasks it solves. Our experience
The editors of online media are always faced with a problem: how to attract the reader when competition in the news field is urohgromna, and nobody has yet canceled the TV. Therefore, other non-textual methods of interaction with the audience are used here. One of the main ones is gamification.
Informal presentations of Habrahabr as a picture for drawing attention
There are elements on the site that suggest that the user will not only read and comment on texts, but also show his activity in a different way. The most obvious thing is to simply press the buttons, vote, highlighting the important and unimportant, to believe or not to believe, to approve or not to approve the words of the speakers.
After all, not every media reader is ready to write comments - let's say honestly, they are written by a rather narrow group of users who are eager to convey their opinions to everyone. The majority of visitors to media sites come, read and leave, deeply experiencing something in themselves. And because they are lazy, and because they do not have “super-important” thoughts, and because they do not want to engage in discussions, quarreling with opponents. There are a lot of reasons, but the general conclusion is one. The forms of comments on the site, of course, should be, but it is better to supplement the site with other opportunities to be more active, more impersonal.
Let's look at the most vivid examples of gamification on media sites.
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Of the largest media outlets, RIA Novosti was actively trying to introduce gamification, even before it became the Russia Today MIA.
After the last global update of the RIA website, the opportunity to register with the RIA Club appeared there. Having become its member, the user got access to the elements of gamification, although the mechanism, as it becomes apparent when analyzing the site, was never completed.
What, however, was done, and most importantly - why?
First, after registering, any member of the RIA Club could receive medals. Logging in and looking through the news, he quickly became the owner of the first of them, an entry level, for viewing the first ten articles of a certain category. In the future, the medals became more and more weighty - as a result, for the latter it was necessary to look through under a thousand materials.
The most interesting thing here is that these medals gave users nothing. Maximum - they could boast in social networks, but nothing more. Neither access to additional content, nor any status of “super reader” for comments - in fact, these were the forms of “games” in a computer game, meaningless, but encouraging the excitement of a collector inherent in any person.
The website of the agency “medals” was given the opportunity, above all, to improve the quality of the audience: the person (in theory) had to come back, dreaming to get not a bronze but a silver achievement, to press on all new texts - along the way, by itself, increasing the depth view, and its time.
Here we need to clarify that the hereditary disease of most of the agency’s projects (and its flagship site), as can be seen from open statistics, was a very low proportion of the core of the audience. The main traffic fell on search engines, and readers were not in a hurry, getting out of bed in the morning to go exactly to ria.ru, preferring to use an impartial presentation of the material for something more ideologically or personally sharpened.
Thus, the very idea with medals was correct, but unfinished. “RIA-Club” in general produced (and even more so now makes) the impression of some kind of deficiencies. The offer of membership in it was lost against the background of other elements of the page, and why this membership, except for achivka, was not very clear.
There was no real communication between the users, because, as we said above, the audience of “pushing buttons” and “those who are in the comments” is not too similar to each other.
Also, the RIA website was bolted to the ability to like or dislik any material. But - again a flaw - she was not connected with the Club in any way. Click "like-dislike" could and can any user, without the need for any registration. In addition, it was always incomprehensible what exactly the final statistics “25 fingers up and 37 fingers down” in relation to the news “40-degree frosts will come to Yakutia” (or any other material the agency may have the most diverse).
Thus, the RIA's efforts in the field of gamification can be considered only partially successful. These were, rather, the first steps whose task was to increase the core of the audience.
Now let's look at another, in a sense, the opposite of RIA Novosti, an example of a news site - Echo of Moscow . Just in this case, the share of the audience’s core is very high, in particular, due to the fact that readers come to the site either for a personal position (the main page of the portal is composed of texts of media people), or for transcripts of airs that are also submitted in the format of blogs. Actually, news has never been a strong site of the Echo site.
Therefore, the audience of the portal radio station is very different from the audience of the agency portal. The opportunity to enter into controversy with the authors of blogs is emphasized even in the “self-advertisement” on the Echo website, and the long threads of discussions comprise several pages. That is why the elements of gamification, although present on the site, are made quite invisible. Yes, the records here can also be liked (but without the possibility to express their negative attitude), although the buttons are several times smaller than those of the RIA.
Buttons on RIA News before the material
Buttons on RIA News after the material
Buttons on "Echo" before the material
Buttons on "Echo" after the material
The logic is obvious: the more motivated the audience is, the less it needs to be trained - they will come and take everything.
Similarly with the Ehov version of the "user club". No achievements here are given out - only advanced features in the comments: again, the core already exists, you don’t need to lure it with additional artificial bonuses that, to be honest, do not seem to be too effective.
Thus, the main focus is on the possibility of communication between users. Each of them has a “About Me” page, and the site itself contains elements of a proto-social network: for example, you can be “recommended” by other users, in essence, you can earn social prestige.
Note that a similar idea on the RIA website is also present, but much less developed. Although users have pages there, but active interaction between them is no longer provided. If on the "Echo" in the comments, readers themselves take on some of the functions of moderators, then the RIA is responsible for a separate staff. Thus, social interaction on “Echo” is much better developed, which is explained by the same core formed by “personality-oriented” content.
As another example of interaction with audiences, we’ll take a not-so-large website as the two previous ones - the Moscow city portal M24 . Here, it would seem, a number of gamification elements are also implemented, but they do not work, however.
In the header on the main page there is a dedicated “ People ” link, clicking on which you can get into a rather strange section. Here they are simultaneously offering to add news to the “News of readers ” community , and to admire the “top users” and register - but all these functions turn out to be dead on closer examination. The Community is a non-moderated tape where complaints about problems with garbage cans alternate with the latest news from crazy prophets and PR of some deputies. "Top Users" does not change over the years and is a list of editorial staff. The only thing that gives registration is the ability to comment on the news. But these comments are so rare and so obviously not in demand that those who want to write them are not really. However, the site does not call for this either: the “Comment” button is made quite small and unobvious, there is no possibility to like this or that text (more precisely, this possibility exists, but only in the “community” and only the text sent by the user).
Suppose a user visits a site, wants to comment something. He needs to register or make a Prologin Cheers social network. Ok, he does it. Again, click "Comment." It displays a pop-up window with some User Agreement:
Okay, the person ticks and clicks Continue. It goes to the redirect page, where he is asked to upgrade to a new version of their site:
Then you can go to the main page of the new site. But not to the page of material that the person originally wanted to comment on. Next, the person must again find the material he is interested in, click on “Comment” and, finally, do his own thing. In short, everything is very difficult. From here "abundance" of comments to articles.
Even after registering on the site, the user does not receive any significant bonuses - except that he will hardly need the opportunity to comment on the text, and he will not see the reaction to his comments.
One conclusion suggests itself: here gamification is present for a tick, because “it is fashionable”, but it cannot work in its current form.
Thus, on the basis of the three considered examples we will name the main elements of gamification.
Firstly, the medal-achivki. They allow you to play on the excitement of the user to get the next “rank”, so that he, as well as other readers, can see him. Moreover, medals should be issued ideally for essential things (like adding your own news), but this requires a “human” assessment of users and cannot be left to the “fields of 10 beds, get a medal with a watering can”.
Status-ranks adjoin the achivka. They should give users some real advantages over non-readers. Say - allow them to moderate comments from other readers. Or - add news, enter into discussions with the "official" speakers on the site. There are many possibilities, but the main thing is for the user to see feedback, feedback.
Secondly, the ability to evaluate materials. "Thumbs up - thumbs down", all the same likes, setting priorities that could affect the ranking of materials on the site. We repeat once again that such “buttons” are often more important than the comment form, since not every user is ready to write the text (and from the point of view of moderation and Roskomnadzor such “quiet” activity is much more convenient for any editorial office).
Thirdly, a kind of social network with a user page, where he can tell about himself, mark materials he likes, show them to other readers, etc.
We add that each of these three points should be supported by the site’s constant feedback, the most obvious way of which is mailing. A reminder of the topic (if the user liked the news from the storyline), an offer to visit the site where it was registered, information about the response to a comment - and so on, everything here depends on the content of the portal.
" Promises . Ru " - not a big site. The editors search for the promises of politicians, bureaucrats, economists' forecasts, etc., and then look at whether they are fulfilled, fulfilled - or not. If you do not take into account the news, which are side content, about 20 articles (promises, forecasts and expert opinions) appear on the portal per day. Yes, they may be devoted to the main topics of the day, but they cannot fully and quickly describe the news picture. This is where gamification comes to the rescue.
First, the ranks. There are three of them on the site. The first - “silent” - is given to any reader from the very beginning, and even given obsessively: a banner on the page that actively proposes to cease to be this very “silent”, that is, to register.
Registration gives the second “rank” - “The voice of the people” - and real advantages: now the user can add promises of politicians and officials (that is, send them to the editorial office so that she can write them as full-fledged articles), sum up the promises (again - provide information that such and such a speaker did or did not do what he was talking about). Finally, the reader can simply leave comments.
In addition, he will receive a personal account on the site, but more on that later.
The third rank is the “People's Expert”, its assignment is entirely left to the editors. This is necessary to cut off all sorts of crazy prophets and other not the most adequate users, while, on the contrary, highlighting readers who leave truly valuable comments and help the editorial staff in searching for promises.
The texts of the “people's expert” can be published on an equal footing with the recorded opinions of experts who comment on the promises of the speakers. Thus, it is planned to gradually form not only the base of active users, but also turn the site into a discussion platform with feedback. The scheme works especially well on the example of the regions, since there the power is traditionally “closer to the people”.
Achievements are also planned - for added promises, for their summarized results - while they should be visible in the user profile, giving it a certain “weight” on the site, noticeable to other readers.
The next element of gamification is “buttons”. You can vote on “Promises” for any material - evaluate the news as important or unimportant, agree or disagree that the speaker’s promise will be fulfilled (“I believe - I do not believe”), “support” or “not support” the expert commenting on the promises and forecasts.
At the same time, any such vote has a “second step”: as soon as a user clicks a button, they are shown statistics, other people's confidence rating for this text.
From the ratings of confidence in each text of a person, as a result, a general rating of trust in her words is formed, which users cannot directly influence.
In addition, by clicking on the button next to any material, readers subscribe to update it. Now they will receive letters by mail to summarize the promise - or that the deadline for its implementation will soon come. Thus, registered users are invited to independently control the speakers who are interested in them. This is achieved precisely because of the elements of gamification.
Finally, registered users who are encouraged to return to the site by letters are provided with a personal account. Again, during its revision, it is planned to make all user activities visible to each other, provide them with the opportunity to correspond not only in comments, see which reader is an expert on what topic (based on the specifics of added and failed promises) and so on. All this will contribute to the formation on the website of the expert community and - again - to increase the permanent audience.
The buttons on the site are pressed daily from 50 to 600 times.
For two months, the number of registered increased from 2,000 to 15,000 people. The number of promises added by users has increased from 30 to 200 per month. Viewing depth increased from 1.5 to 3.
So, as we can see, gamification is an effective mechanism for attracting users, which, after implementation, without any effort from the editorial board, “automatically” increases both the quality and quantity of the audience.
Several useful articles on the topic: one / two / three
And what "gamified" sites do you know? Leave examples in the comments, how it works on other resources, and most importantly - what bonuses bring them.
Thanks for attention!
Informal presentations of Habrahabr as a picture for drawing attention
There are elements on the site that suggest that the user will not only read and comment on texts, but also show his activity in a different way. The most obvious thing is to simply press the buttons, vote, highlighting the important and unimportant, to believe or not to believe, to approve or not to approve the words of the speakers.
After all, not every media reader is ready to write comments - let's say honestly, they are written by a rather narrow group of users who are eager to convey their opinions to everyone. The majority of visitors to media sites come, read and leave, deeply experiencing something in themselves. And because they are lazy, and because they do not have “super-important” thoughts, and because they do not want to engage in discussions, quarreling with opponents. There are a lot of reasons, but the general conclusion is one. The forms of comments on the site, of course, should be, but it is better to supplement the site with other opportunities to be more active, more impersonal.
Let's look at the most vivid examples of gamification on media sites.
')
1 case. RIA News
Of the largest media outlets, RIA Novosti was actively trying to introduce gamification, even before it became the Russia Today MIA.
After the last global update of the RIA website, the opportunity to register with the RIA Club appeared there. Having become its member, the user got access to the elements of gamification, although the mechanism, as it becomes apparent when analyzing the site, was never completed.
What, however, was done, and most importantly - why?
First, after registering, any member of the RIA Club could receive medals. Logging in and looking through the news, he quickly became the owner of the first of them, an entry level, for viewing the first ten articles of a certain category. In the future, the medals became more and more weighty - as a result, for the latter it was necessary to look through under a thousand materials.
The most interesting thing here is that these medals gave users nothing. Maximum - they could boast in social networks, but nothing more. Neither access to additional content, nor any status of “super reader” for comments - in fact, these were the forms of “games” in a computer game, meaningless, but encouraging the excitement of a collector inherent in any person.
The website of the agency “medals” was given the opportunity, above all, to improve the quality of the audience: the person (in theory) had to come back, dreaming to get not a bronze but a silver achievement, to press on all new texts - along the way, by itself, increasing the depth view, and its time.
Here we need to clarify that the hereditary disease of most of the agency’s projects (and its flagship site), as can be seen from open statistics, was a very low proportion of the core of the audience. The main traffic fell on search engines, and readers were not in a hurry, getting out of bed in the morning to go exactly to ria.ru, preferring to use an impartial presentation of the material for something more ideologically or personally sharpened.
Thus, the very idea with medals was correct, but unfinished. “RIA-Club” in general produced (and even more so now makes) the impression of some kind of deficiencies. The offer of membership in it was lost against the background of other elements of the page, and why this membership, except for achivka, was not very clear.
There was no real communication between the users, because, as we said above, the audience of “pushing buttons” and “those who are in the comments” is not too similar to each other.
Also, the RIA website was bolted to the ability to like or dislik any material. But - again a flaw - she was not connected with the Club in any way. Click "like-dislike" could and can any user, without the need for any registration. In addition, it was always incomprehensible what exactly the final statistics “25 fingers up and 37 fingers down” in relation to the news “40-degree frosts will come to Yakutia” (or any other material the agency may have the most diverse).
Thus, the RIA's efforts in the field of gamification can be considered only partially successful. These were, rather, the first steps whose task was to increase the core of the audience.
2 case. Echo of Moscow
Now let's look at another, in a sense, the opposite of RIA Novosti, an example of a news site - Echo of Moscow . Just in this case, the share of the audience’s core is very high, in particular, due to the fact that readers come to the site either for a personal position (the main page of the portal is composed of texts of media people), or for transcripts of airs that are also submitted in the format of blogs. Actually, news has never been a strong site of the Echo site.
Therefore, the audience of the portal radio station is very different from the audience of the agency portal. The opportunity to enter into controversy with the authors of blogs is emphasized even in the “self-advertisement” on the Echo website, and the long threads of discussions comprise several pages. That is why the elements of gamification, although present on the site, are made quite invisible. Yes, the records here can also be liked (but without the possibility to express their negative attitude), although the buttons are several times smaller than those of the RIA.
Buttons on RIA News before the material
Buttons on RIA News after the material
Buttons on "Echo" before the material
Buttons on "Echo" after the material
The logic is obvious: the more motivated the audience is, the less it needs to be trained - they will come and take everything.
Similarly with the Ehov version of the "user club". No achievements here are given out - only advanced features in the comments: again, the core already exists, you don’t need to lure it with additional artificial bonuses that, to be honest, do not seem to be too effective.
Thus, the main focus is on the possibility of communication between users. Each of them has a “About Me” page, and the site itself contains elements of a proto-social network: for example, you can be “recommended” by other users, in essence, you can earn social prestige.
Note that a similar idea on the RIA website is also present, but much less developed. Although users have pages there, but active interaction between them is no longer provided. If on the "Echo" in the comments, readers themselves take on some of the functions of moderators, then the RIA is responsible for a separate staff. Thus, social interaction on “Echo” is much better developed, which is explained by the same core formed by “personality-oriented” content.
3 case. M24
As another example of interaction with audiences, we’ll take a not-so-large website as the two previous ones - the Moscow city portal M24 . Here, it would seem, a number of gamification elements are also implemented, but they do not work, however.
In the header on the main page there is a dedicated “ People ” link, clicking on which you can get into a rather strange section. Here they are simultaneously offering to add news to the “News of readers ” community , and to admire the “top users” and register - but all these functions turn out to be dead on closer examination. The Community is a non-moderated tape where complaints about problems with garbage cans alternate with the latest news from crazy prophets and PR of some deputies. "Top Users" does not change over the years and is a list of editorial staff. The only thing that gives registration is the ability to comment on the news. But these comments are so rare and so obviously not in demand that those who want to write them are not really. However, the site does not call for this either: the “Comment” button is made quite small and unobvious, there is no possibility to like this or that text (more precisely, this possibility exists, but only in the “community” and only the text sent by the user).
Suppose a user visits a site, wants to comment something. He needs to register or make a Prologin Cheers social network. Ok, he does it. Again, click "Comment." It displays a pop-up window with some User Agreement:
Okay, the person ticks and clicks Continue. It goes to the redirect page, where he is asked to upgrade to a new version of their site:
Then you can go to the main page of the new site. But not to the page of material that the person originally wanted to comment on. Next, the person must again find the material he is interested in, click on “Comment” and, finally, do his own thing. In short, everything is very difficult. From here "abundance" of comments to articles.
Even after registering on the site, the user does not receive any significant bonuses - except that he will hardly need the opportunity to comment on the text, and he will not see the reaction to his comments.
One conclusion suggests itself: here gamification is present for a tick, because “it is fashionable”, but it cannot work in its current form.
The basic techniques of gamification
Thus, on the basis of the three considered examples we will name the main elements of gamification.
Firstly, the medal-achivki. They allow you to play on the excitement of the user to get the next “rank”, so that he, as well as other readers, can see him. Moreover, medals should be issued ideally for essential things (like adding your own news), but this requires a “human” assessment of users and cannot be left to the “fields of 10 beds, get a medal with a watering can”.
Status-ranks adjoin the achivka. They should give users some real advantages over non-readers. Say - allow them to moderate comments from other readers. Or - add news, enter into discussions with the "official" speakers on the site. There are many possibilities, but the main thing is for the user to see feedback, feedback.
Secondly, the ability to evaluate materials. "Thumbs up - thumbs down", all the same likes, setting priorities that could affect the ranking of materials on the site. We repeat once again that such “buttons” are often more important than the comment form, since not every user is ready to write the text (and from the point of view of moderation and Roskomnadzor such “quiet” activity is much more convenient for any editorial office).
Thirdly, a kind of social network with a user page, where he can tell about himself, mark materials he likes, show them to other readers, etc.
We add that each of these three points should be supported by the site’s constant feedback, the most obvious way of which is mailing. A reminder of the topic (if the user liked the news from the storyline), an offer to visit the site where it was registered, information about the response to a comment - and so on, everything here depends on the content of the portal.
4 case. Promises.Ru
" Promises . Ru " - not a big site. The editors search for the promises of politicians, bureaucrats, economists' forecasts, etc., and then look at whether they are fulfilled, fulfilled - or not. If you do not take into account the news, which are side content, about 20 articles (promises, forecasts and expert opinions) appear on the portal per day. Yes, they may be devoted to the main topics of the day, but they cannot fully and quickly describe the news picture. This is where gamification comes to the rescue.
First, the ranks. There are three of them on the site. The first - “silent” - is given to any reader from the very beginning, and even given obsessively: a banner on the page that actively proposes to cease to be this very “silent”, that is, to register.
Registration gives the second “rank” - “The voice of the people” - and real advantages: now the user can add promises of politicians and officials (that is, send them to the editorial office so that she can write them as full-fledged articles), sum up the promises (again - provide information that such and such a speaker did or did not do what he was talking about). Finally, the reader can simply leave comments.
In addition, he will receive a personal account on the site, but more on that later.
The third rank is the “People's Expert”, its assignment is entirely left to the editors. This is necessary to cut off all sorts of crazy prophets and other not the most adequate users, while, on the contrary, highlighting readers who leave truly valuable comments and help the editorial staff in searching for promises.
The texts of the “people's expert” can be published on an equal footing with the recorded opinions of experts who comment on the promises of the speakers. Thus, it is planned to gradually form not only the base of active users, but also turn the site into a discussion platform with feedback. The scheme works especially well on the example of the regions, since there the power is traditionally “closer to the people”.
Achievements are also planned - for added promises, for their summarized results - while they should be visible in the user profile, giving it a certain “weight” on the site, noticeable to other readers.
The next element of gamification is “buttons”. You can vote on “Promises” for any material - evaluate the news as important or unimportant, agree or disagree that the speaker’s promise will be fulfilled (“I believe - I do not believe”), “support” or “not support” the expert commenting on the promises and forecasts.
At the same time, any such vote has a “second step”: as soon as a user clicks a button, they are shown statistics, other people's confidence rating for this text.
From the ratings of confidence in each text of a person, as a result, a general rating of trust in her words is formed, which users cannot directly influence.
In addition, by clicking on the button next to any material, readers subscribe to update it. Now they will receive letters by mail to summarize the promise - or that the deadline for its implementation will soon come. Thus, registered users are invited to independently control the speakers who are interested in them. This is achieved precisely because of the elements of gamification.
Finally, registered users who are encouraged to return to the site by letters are provided with a personal account. Again, during its revision, it is planned to make all user activities visible to each other, provide them with the opportunity to correspond not only in comments, see which reader is an expert on what topic (based on the specifics of added and failed promises) and so on. All this will contribute to the formation on the website of the expert community and - again - to increase the permanent audience.
Results of the introduction of gamification on Promises
The buttons on the site are pressed daily from 50 to 600 times.
For two months, the number of registered increased from 2,000 to 15,000 people. The number of promises added by users has increased from 30 to 200 per month. Viewing depth increased from 1.5 to 3.
So, as we can see, gamification is an effective mechanism for attracting users, which, after implementation, without any effort from the editorial board, “automatically” increases both the quality and quantity of the audience.
Several useful articles on the topic: one / two / three
And what "gamified" sites do you know? Leave examples in the comments, how it works on other resources, and most importantly - what bonuses bring them.
Thanks for attention!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/289248/
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