Guide to Creating a Virtual Economy for Social Applications

Anu Shukla, the CEO of offerpal media, gave a presentation at Myspace DevJam on building a virtual economy for engaging  social applications.  Offerpal media is a “Managed Offer Network” for social application publishers and online merchants. 

The Key points from the presentation are:

Name the Currency – The Virtual currency should have a name in the application.  It could be anything from “green bucks”, “chips”, “pet dollars” etc so that a user can relate to it with respect to the application.

Earn Currency – The user of the application should be provided with multiple different methods to earn the virtual currency and be a part of the system.  A few common  methods are:

1. Loyalty Rewards. (Logging In to Application)
2. Incentives to Invite New Users.
3. Complete Action/Activity.
4. Complete Offers from online merchants.
5. Real Dollars using Paypal.

 Redeem Currency – The user should also be given different avenues to redeem all the currency that they earned in the application. It helps to keep the economy healthy.

1.  Decorative Goods – These could be self expressive gifts. Ex: Clothes, Toys in the “Make a baby” application.
2. Virtual Gifts – The ability to gift other users a virtual product, as it leads to social interaction. Ex: Gifting Plants in the application “Green patch”.
3.  Functional Goods – These goods alter the user experience of an application. It could add more power/ability to the character in the application. Ex: Buying Virtual Weapons to enhance your chance of winning and defeating the enemy.

Promote Currency – The Application should promote the currency. A tab or banner add should be displayed to the user, so that they can easily find different ways to earn and redeem the currency

 Keep Economy Fresh – The economy should always be fresh so that the users have the incentive of interacting with the application and have a fun experience. This can be done by adding new goods, and innovative services to keep the interest level of the users always up.

Measure, Test, Analyze – The developer should always measure and tweak their application based on user behavior and their interaction with the virtual economy.

Update: Post by Anu Shukla on Tips.

Announcement: Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford

 

The Stanford Entrepreneuship Network is hosting a week full of events related to entrepreneurship. It start’s on Feb 18th and is free and open to all students, parents, alumni and memebers of the greater Stanford Community.

 

Event Schedule
2/18	Wednesday   EWeek Kickoff: Stanford President, John Hennessy on Entrepreneurial Leadership
2/19	Thursday   Panel Discussion: Careers in Product Creation & Manufacturing
2/20	Friday   Venture Capital Speed Dating
2/21	Saturday   Pitching and Presenting Workshop: Make Your Story Compelling “Bring Your Product to Life” Workshop
2/22	Sunday   Social Enterprises Panel and Showcase
2/23	Monday   “Solving the Global Leadership and Talent Equation” Seminar and Reception
2/24	Tuesday   “Startup 101” Job Fair Entrepreneurship Mixer Creativity Challenge: James Bond Casino Caper
2/25	Wednesday   GSB Entrepreneurship Conference “The Next Big Thing”: Tim Draper, Tony Perkins & Michael Moe Networking Reception and Showcase

 

For more details please visit here.

Adhearsion … A Telephony Framework

 Jay Phillips is the creator of an opensource telephony framework Adhearsion. It’s a Ruby based framework that he created, so that the developers can have a great experience while creating voice enabled applications. 

Adhearsion has  a sandbox for the developers to test and create some sample applications without having to download the framework. The sandbox version does not allow calls to land lines and cell phones, but gives you a good feel of the framework and it’s capabilities. I am looking forward to some great applications in voice telephony.

Developers should check out the Screencasts.