Comments on: Are people like lab rats? Using reward schedules to drive engagement

By: mauzer_tim

mauzer_tim — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:15:33 +0000

It's quite interesting to read this article 3 years after. At the moment LinkedIn has even better Alexa rank (28) over MySpace (29). But its auditory (unlike MySpace and FaceBook) consists mainly from business people who generates the revenue much better than a mixed bag in usual social networks.

By: Evan

Evan — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:10:52 +0000

Kathy Sierra wrote a great post about the same topic: "What can software learn from kung fu?"
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate...

By: Evan

Evan — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:10:52 +0000

Kathy Sierra wrote a great post about the same topic: "What can software learn from kung fu?"
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate...

By: To my first 10,000 blog subscribers: Thank you! | Andrew Chen (@andrew_chen)

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:55:06 +0000

[...] Are people like lab rats? Using reward schedules to drive engagement [...]

By: The_DMV

The_DMV — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:56:21 +0000

In terms of implementing these strategies for a DMV site it kinda already exists. There are a number of sites already offering the reward of saving time as well as a community aspect to ordinary boring tasks such as you typically find at the dmv. Take DMV.com as an example.

By: Alex Johnson

Alex Johnson — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 05:42:37 +0000

Great post Andrew – I would be interested to know how you think reward schedules could best be applied in the market research environment, where there is limited time and potential effects on data of any reward mechanism. I am running a big project on improving respondent engagement across our group so if you have time and are interested in connecting, let me know.

By: Joe Suh

Joe Suh — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 04:24:56 +0000

Great food for thought...

I've been thinking about introducing some kind of credits system to a Facebook app I'm working on.

It's funny you mentioned LinkedIn... I've been thinking about reward schedules and engagement. Easy to do with Food Fights and Vampires... a little harder to do with resumes.

By: jim young

jim young — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:13:51 +0000

Good insights- you nailed this one on the head. With regards to HOTorNOT, the primary reward the next photo to be rated. The post-rating screen communicates the community aspect- “what others thought”, “last checked their score X minutes ago”.

You can also consider the rewards schedule to be variable ratio, since the next person isn’t guaranteed to be hot. If you have ever played with any of the HoN clones that only show attractive people all the time, you will find the experience is less addictive.

By: AdamD

AdamD — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:02:04 +0000

Good thoughts, Andrew. Do you think this only works on a certain kind of site? For example, could a small town newspaper implement these strategies? How about a DMV site?

No doubt these strategies should be implemented by social networks, but how could they be harnessed by regular old sites?

By: Justin Chen

Justin Chen — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:59:48 +0000

Nice post. To be fair, LinkedIn did do a decent job with the profile completeness percentage which does help drive more profile info (at least it did for me). But I agree, after that, I’ve got no reason to go back.