This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: Badgeville
Quick Pitch: Badgeville is a social rewards and analytics platform designed to increase, maintain and influence loyalty for online publishers.
Genius Idea: Applications and web services that reward users through activity-based bonuses like badges and reputation tokens are very trendy right now. These game mechanics encourage repeat behavior, inspire user engagement and reward loyalty.
Badgeville was built to be a plug-and-play solution for publishers wishing to add these social rewards to their services without the heavy lifting.
Badgeville is a just-add-water way to reward your app users or site visitors for their actions. Publishers can define the user behaviors they want to reward and attach points, badges, trophies, levels, status and other forms of reputation to these behaviors.
Should a user “unlock” an achievement, those tokens can be shared to Facebook and Twitter, and users can earn more points in the process. Publishers can also highlight user behaviors through real-time activity streams, leaderboards or friends graphs that rank users against their friends. There’s also a Badgeville API for deeper site or app integration.
Obviously, the idea is to use Badgeville’s platform to motivate users to take additional actions and spread the word about products or services as they level up or earn elevated status. As a user, these additional elements may turn an otherwise stale experience into a competitive sport. So users can prove their ultimate fan status for a blog, website or application they love and get digital rewards in the process. Who doesn’t appreciate a little recognition from time to time?
Badgeville is fresh on the scene but has $250,000 in seed funding and a client list that includes SlideShare, Comcast Sports and Philly.com. We find the idea to be promising, but we also see the potential for badges, reputation and rewards to lose their luster once they become commonplace.
BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
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