Micro-contribution & incentive schemes; how foursquare have recruited their massive team of data entry & market research volunteers.
I started working for foursquare on November 24th right when I signed up and started playing.
Very quickly a whole new dimension- in the form of points, leaderboard and mayorship- was added to my everyday activities- drinking coffee, meeting friends for drinks, eating lunch and work meetings hosted at cafes. With foursquare still relatively new to Melbourne, there was definite advantage in travelling all over town visiting my favourite venues and checking in- bonus points rewarded for adding new data to the system- consequentially contributing foursquare’s index of venues.
The foursquare business model is unquestionably worth remark.
“Let’s create an index of venues for every major city in the world”; “In the index we will show popularity of each venue and recommendations for whilst you’re there.”
The logical next step of such a discussion would be to hire a data entry team to populate a database and to engage a market research company to provide data on what venues people like and why; instead foursquare developed a very clever points based incentive scheme- points not redeemable- allowing them to crowd source the entire responsibility.
A fortnight ago I was upgraded to a Superuser (Level 1) essentially allowing me to fix and edit incorrect or incomplete data. On the first day I spent close to two and half hours editing data- perhaps if I did it a lot of it I would be upgraded to Superuser (Level 2). Foursquare’s social aspect and incentive scheme have led them to recruit likely the largest data entry and market research team that has ever existed. Interestingly, even people I know who are not yet on twitter and other social media sites are starting to sign up. The leaderboard refreshes every week- avoiding longer-time users having an unfair advantage- giving every user an equal opportunity to win.
Outside of the brilliance of foursquare’s business model the application itself is difficult to fault; instantly engaging as soon as you sign up through its ability to connect users with their facebook, twitter & gmail contacts; the marketing application for venues through discounts and mayor specials and the self-organising rating system recording the popularity of venues based on the volume of people who check-in. Iterations to come are user lists- imagine ‘cheap-cbd-lunches’- and the ability to ping friends requesting their location.
Microfinance, micropatronage and now micro data entry; there is obvious potential in applying a micro-contribution model; impact is distributed amongst all contributors to achieve a massive result with seemingly little effort- Wikipedia, another great example.
Consider the application of micro-contribution and a foursquare style incentive scheme to issues relating to sustainability- waste reduction, water usage and energy efficiency- what if three months worth of foursquare checkins were plastic bottles picked up from the ground? Imagine a facebook application recording household energy consumption- turn the lights off and don’t leave the tv on for a chance to move up the energy saver leaderboard.
Like anything, there are negative examples of micro-contribution- flicking a cigarette butt onto the ground- imagine the result of many people engaging in the same behaviour. Perhaps the most profound effect that foursquare will have is acting as a case study for the micro-contribution model; prompting us to become more conscious of other micro-contributions that we make; encouraging us to take responsibility for our impact on the world.
Never think that you don’t have the power to change the world; our micro-contributions are doing exactly that every single day.
