Promoted badges on Twenity – how they work and how they perform [updated]
On Twenity, players are awarded badges as part of the main adventure they are playing. These 20 badges for achievements, that get upgraded through different levels, come in various forms and materials, from paper, plastic, to metal. But these aren't the only badges in the game, users can also unlock shiny promoted badges, which they get for following various Twitter accounts. These badges are the first and most obvious way of potentially monetizing Twenity, and at this point, it looks like they could actually work.
How to get them
There are 4 promoted badges currently available on Twenity. If you want them, you can follow these accounts on Twitter:
You need two calculations to unlock these badges. The first time, Twenity adds the followed profile to your leaderboard. The second time, you will get the badge.
How they perform
At this point, we have over 900 players on Twenity. Quite a few of them have unlocked promoted badges, but we wanted to know, how many of those were given to players for following a specific account after they've started playing the game.
The following assumption may not be perfectly correct, since there can be other reasons people started following these 4 accounts after they've started using Twenity, but here it goes: if a player made more than 2 calculations (first to record the friendship, second to unlock the badge) between the time they've registered to Twenity and unlocked one of the badges, it's pretty much safe to say they started following these accounts because of Twenity. Here are the full statistics of promoted badges, recorded on February 13th 2012 (download the full list):
| Divine design |
|
49 |
18 |
| Geek hive* |
|
134 |
25 |
| Heavenly creatures |
|
51 |
16 |
| Vainglory** |
|
156 |
88 |
*Geek hive was introduced on December 28th 15:00 CET, so the numbers included in the list are for those that have made more than two calculations between that date and the date of unlocking the badge
**There are people who follow Twenity for other reasons, such as the service itself
What this means for marketers
While these numbers may not seem like much, they are still pretty interesting for the current scale of Twenity. While the least popular promoted badge is currently owned by 49 players (more than 5%), the average amount of new followers gained because of it is almost 20, which is more than 2%! While these number may not be representative for larger amounts of players, they are very impressive for less than 2 months of Twenity's existence.
Marketeres can always decide to buy followers elsewhere, but it's a practice that probably doesn't have real effect, since most of those users are not engaged, perhaps even bots. But on Twenity, most players are real people, engaged people. And we haven't even come to the branding effects of owning a custom badge on Twenity.
Interested? Contact us on advertisers@twenity.com.
Update: Mar 26 2012
There were a few more changes in the last month and a half, so we are attaching the new numbers. The performance is closing in on 3%.
| Divine design |
|
65 |
30 |
| Geek hive |
|
162 |
37 |
| Heavenly creatures |
|
69 |
30 |
| Vainglory |
|
188 |
115 |
Is Twenity an Adventure or a Role Playing Game (RPG)?
One of the most important things we were trying to achieve with the concept of Twenity, was to make a real-life Role Playing Game based on your online activity. Something that would be able to portray a person on Twitter as a charachter of some sort, together with its race, class, and the world this character lives in. This character would gradually evolve, becoming stronger and gaining artifacts on its path.
RPG?
This is still our vision. But we were cautions about going all-in with the RPG part. Role Playing Game is a strong word, which also suggest different fantasy scenes, dragons, princesses and advanced character definition. Since quite a few of our players are probably gamers, this expectation could leave them dissapointed and would overpromise in a way. That's why we have decided to use »adventure« instead of »RPG« and work hard on polishing the service in such a way that perhaps someday it will be worth calling a real-life RPG.
RPG!
But that doesn't mean we haven't managed to successfully implement a few Role Playing Game elements. On Twenity, you start off as a rookie (level 1), but as you play, you unlock other levels, and 3 people are already in the highest, 5th level. You receive prizes which are both your artifacts and your attributes; badges, which you are awarded for various reasons. You can determine the world you play in, which is currently defined by your Twitter timezone. You can choose your race in the form of a user type (currently Person, Brand, Public Figure, Media). And you can put yourself in two different industries, which are analog to RPG classes.
Our goal is to go even further in this direction, hopefully one day we will be able to make an even more detailed and advanced alternative profile of your online presence.
The two basic components of Twenity: the score and the adventure
We have designed Twenity to be as intuitive as possible. Based on the initial impressions of our players, we've done a pretty good job. But a few words concerning the two major elements of our service won't hurt, so everybody will be able to understand how the concept behind Twenity works. A game that helps you discover your social capital while competing with your friends.
Your Twitter profile
Based on the data it recieves from your Twitter profile, Twenity does two different things:
- The score (calculation) component: it determines your Twitter influence based on the amount of followers, mentions, retweets you have and lists you appear on, giving you a score
- The adventure (game) component: it makes an alternative portrait of your Twitter behaviour, which is displayed by your level and badges
Developing the game
Twenity started off as a plain calculation, which determines your social capital (we will be revealing how it works in some other post). At that time, it was called Twitfluence. But we knew this wasn't enough, so we've begun flirting with gamification, trying to bring gaming mechanics to the scoring. This lead us to designing a real-life adventure that contains challenges, levels and achievements (badges).
From score to adventure
The score you receive on Twenity is fully independent from the adventure. It is not influenced by your level, badges or any other things in the game, it is calculated purely on your Twitter activity (followers, tweets, lists). On the other hand, the adventure part (levels and badges) is sometimes dependent on the score. While some badges are rewarded for different Twitter achievements (number of followers, retweets, etc.), others are unlocked with Twenity activity and information (days on Twenity, the score you receive, etc.).
Even though Twenity is a game first, social influence measurement tool second, the score is its core, and the gaming part is wrapped around it. You need to have a stable foundation for advanced features, and the calculation provides just that. But it's the adventure part that makes is so much fun and different.