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 |