In the social media industry we have a well known phrase that’s been used so often it’s become sort of a cliché. The most common version is this: “It’s not the number of people you have on your page, it’s the amount of engagement that matters.”  While this point could be debated (but I won’t do it in this post) everyone agrees that engagement is the key to the future of social media.

Wait, future? Isn’t engagement already here? Well, current online engagement does exist, but is limited to the push of a button. However, we can peer in to the future of big social media by taking a look at a smaller social network. I am referring to the most engaging social network on the web, in my mind, which you’ve probably never used. ”But Shahar, you well endowed genius of a man,” you might ask, “what is this social network we’ve never heard of?”  Well, boys and girls, I’m talking about the most engaging social network on Earth. WOW.

WOW was not a word to describe what I just said (although it definitely does deserve a wow) it’s the name of the network itself.  WOW (World of Warcraft) is an MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game), loosely based on any fantasy film, book, or videogame known to man. In the game, your avatar (or profile picture, if you prefer) goes around the virtual world killing monsters and finishing quests (i.e. like us and participate in our campaigns), usually by being a part of a guild (group), interacting with other players and buying virtual goods (sometimes for real money).

So yeah, it’s a videogame, but it’s also a social network, and that brings me to my major point: It’s not the numbers, it’s the amount of engagement that matters (yeah, I know, I lied). WOW has a little over 11 million users, which makes it rather a lightweight in the social media biz,but it creates an ROI matched only by women in underwear. People are actually buying virtual goods for real cash, just think what brands can do with that. NIKE can sell limited edition boots of levitation, Coca-Cola can sell in-game healing potions – all as a part of their social media marketing campaign. Hell, Elite, a candy company in Israel, did the same thing with FarmVille. The ROI is so high because of one thing, the one thing that will change the future of social media and create engagement like nobody’s business, that thing, is Game Mechanics.

Game mechanics is the biggest engagement motivator there is. Don’t believe me? Just look at this one professor from Indiana who raised both attendance and participation among students by using RPG (Role Playing Game) like features (levels, quests, guilds) instead of traditional grades. Foursquare is doing it right now, with just a dash of game mechanics (levels, points, badges) it’s creating engagement never seen before. They actually got a person to go to the North Pole just for a badge.

So go off and get your likes and RTs, I’m going to kill a drago… I mean market research. I’m going to do some market research, that’s it.

Shahar has a Master’s degree from the University of Bowser in mushroom kingdom, as a result he is the only Israeli that can finish Super Mario 1 in 11 min 32 sec, very experienced in creative and new-media, internet and tech are his life, has recently successfully graduated from WOW rehab.

Since I have become addicted to Foursquare recently, the location check-in service, I set upon finding the best tips to get to the top of Foursquare’s leaderboard while playing fair.

Here are the top 5 tips I can give you:

1) If you want to become mayor, check-in to places which you know that you’ll be able to check-in to frequently, as many times as possible. Didn’t find your place on Foursquare already? Add it. Don’t forget and don’t neglect for someone else may steal your mayorship from you.

2) Foursquare resets its leaderboard on Sunday nights so make sure to start early in the week.

3) Check-in to new places because these grant you 5 extra points.

4) Get familiar with how to unlock your special badges and work on unlocking them. Here are two great badges lists:
TonyFelice.Wordpress.com and TheKruser.com

5) Don’t cheat. For the sake of the community, don’t check-in to places if you’re not really there. This only hurts the whole user experience on Foursquare.

One feature I feel is missing in Foursquare: Once I check-in to a place, I want the app to scan all my contacts and tell me the 5-10 users who are closest to my proximity at any given time. This will enable users to maximize the potential of meeting people in their network more frequently and make for a more cohesive user-base.

And finally, here’s a good, short Foursquare tutorial for you:

Many companies are using their blogs, campaigns, videos and general outreach to engage with their community in various ways. When companies do think of community contribution in one form or another, it usually takes the form of comments or a like. uTest, the world’s largest marketplace for crowdsourced software testing, is flipping this notion on its head. Believing that an open and global community can offer a knowledge based resource which no closed off company can match, uTest’s community has become one of its most prized assets. To nurture this “asset”, uTest has demonstrated a keen understanding that if you want to have an active community base, you need to engage your community and get them excited about engaging you back. In this post we’re going to focus on three uTest programs structured with just this sort of sensitivity in mind, i.e. that community communication and utilization is a two-way street.

1. The Bug Battle- Bug Battle is a brilliant campaign which actually makes testing interesting for even the non-hardcore, techy individual. Bug Battles pit uTesters against each other in a contest to diagnose a select number of popular web, mobile, desktop and gaming applications in search for the one most in need of a good bug exterminator. Competitions take place quarterly and the latest one sought to uncover the buggiest geo location software from amongst three choice contestants; Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite (results due out in mid-June…stay tuned). uTest community members really get into this one. They relish the competition alone, but if that were not enough, there’s always the not-too-shabby prize money of $4,000 to keep them annoyingly giddy for the few short weeks that the competition is under way.  For participating companies, battles usually generate a healthy amount of press, a scrubbed list of prioritized bugs (given free of charge, upon request) and many are pleased enough with the results to become regular uTest clients.
2. Crash Courses- Another relatively new and cool initiative is uTest’s “Crash Courses” for testers. Instead of going through an official certifying body or training company to create their training material and content, uTest turned to select members of their community to seek out top testers with serious bona fides in both experience and the best testers ratings.                                                                    Using the community itself to source their wisdom and talent, uTest was able to ascribe instant credibility to their courses while giving their community exactly the kind of courses they wanted.
3. uTest Blog- uTest makes heavy use of its community with its “guest blogger“ program. Members not only contribute to the blog itself but also play a hand in its direction. Votes are taken on key content issues such as who should be interviewed, and what questions should be asked for the uTest monthly Testing The Limits column featuring outside experts, execs and authors. uTest’s openness in allowing uTesters to continuously contribute to their posts has contributed to their blog becoming a must read in the app-testing world, and has led to the landing of a “Top 5” finalist spot in the “Best Corporate Blog” category of the 2009 Open Web Awards as well as winning the Hive Award for the best blog of 2010 in the “Business Software” category.

What’s most interesting about these programs is their broad demographics appeal across the global testing community. Advanced testers, who have already done their time in the testing trenches, are not necessarily looking for the same community experience as your bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new recruit. By affording veteran testers the opportunity to become Bug Battle judges, course designers and guest bloggers, uTest has created the equivalent of a corporate advancement track for their community, significantly increasing the uTest community’s time frame of relevance for active community members. Creating a community with a mass appeal for its market and which allows its members to actively influence the community itself, uTest has earned a die-hard following of some of the best software testers in the world. Consequently, uTest is now the benefactor of a top tier pool of talent with which they can offer superior testing services to any prospective client. Grant your community a voice to speak and a hand to act, and they will grant you their talent. A solid winning strategy for any company wishing to optimize community utilization – tested and certified by the experts themselves.

(Guest Post by Ilan Peer)

Since I don’t have an iPhone, it rarely happens that I update my location status, or tweeting where i hang out. To top this all off, I don’t even fully utilize this cool app that I’m writing about! Since it really caught my attention, I wanted to share my thoughts on foursquare – an application that allows you explore your city – has unlocked a certain code for location based service engagement and positively affected income of many local businesses.

An interesting fact about foursquare is that one of their Founders, Dennis Crowley, is a also the former Founder of Dodgeball – another location-based social network that was acquired by Google (can you see the pattern here?). I once read that Dennis was a student of Clay Shirky – which makes his background very credible. Foursquare started with 12 cities and have already reached 53!

The simplicity of the foursquare game is amazing. People “tag” places and venues to get points and badges that will place them in a higher social graph. Meanwhile, local businesses enjoy the uprising of visits to their establishments. The latter part may sponsor a free drink or snack for the mayors (user with most visits to their venue). It is easy to see how this service is addicting when distinguished members of the high-tech industry Tweet about their mayorship.

Here is the foursquare business plan and it’s simple: there are about 150 venues offering mayor specials (treats exclusively for top visitors).

The game is based on a social network of recommendations. Whether it’s a new pub, a special dish or friends’ based recommendation, there are 3 advantages that you can benefit from:

1. Find Your Friends – if not, what the heck are we all doing in facebook??

2. Points and Badges – getting recognition, free drinks and nachos!

3. Explore the City – as they put it: “Think less ‘the food here is top notch!’ and more ‘Go here, do this’ “

These tags and friending-up people are very common these days: follows, lists, groups and fan pages – all these “sort us up.”

It is like when Twitter came up with lists. I think Twitter is in need for people to sort and list the huge directory of people in their data base. As far as foursquare goes, us users will probably turn to little Yellow Page agents, going places, tagging and passing info on to as personal tips (hence the friends layer: the WOM effect).

I’m very close, yet still far from using foursquare since they have not hit Tel-Aviv yet. When foursquare does decide to hit tel aviv, i bet you’ll see me running the streets looking to tag new venues and becoming the mayor of my favorite diners.

Until then, I’ll give it a try with the Israeli new site called CUin.co.il which allows users to look up their friends from Facebook (via Facebook connect) and see where they have checked in.

Update:
Foursquare announced they will open their service for Tel Aviv city in the next few days
Article at Nana10.co.il [in hebrew]

And a presentation by Dennis Crowley at Mobile Monday Amsterdam:

photo by: the lovely miss604

Ilan Peer is the Advertising and Marketing Manager at Blonde 2.0

He is a veteran in the Israeli interactive industry. He’s experienced in creative, design, UI, account managing and media buying. Technology is his fetish. He’s an early adaptor and a gadget freak.