Facebook and Gamification

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As I was engaging in my weekly social media roundup I was wondering how I could improve the reach of the Facebook page, which was when I came across the side tab: ‘Suggested Edits’. I assumed this side tab would give me information, akin to the information you receive when you first make the account but perhaps more advanced, although it was something quite different. This tab actually was a way of helping the community by verifying edits and suggestions made on other businesses pages. For example, it would come up with ‘The Brighton Pier’, and ask the question “is this in Brighton?” You would then either select yes or no. After suggesting just one edit, I got a fine little pop up, which can be seen below. I swiftly got a few more too...

Note that it gets harder to level up.

It is official, Facebook uses gamification. I am not certain how long Facebook has had this feature, (I lie, a quick google search suggests they added this feature in august of 2010) but they certainly understand the importance of gamification. The suggested edits feature is a community oriented approach to ensure that if all of the many locations that people check into are actually the same location, they are codified into one. It’s a neat little organisational exercise that isn’t important enough to pay someone for. So why not get some of the one billion people using Facebook to do it? Who would actually do that though? Okay, well let’s gamify it. That’s how I imagine the conversation went.

Aside from the level up features, they have some other little gamification features, too. They also show you how many people you have helped by doing these edits. This incentivises the edits and gives people a purpose and sense of real meaning. They have also added the accuracy of your edits, to show you how correct you are once your edits have been verified. This shows people if they are on the right track and holds them accountable if they are continuously getting posts wrong.

Facebook is mobilising its community to further help the community and make Facebook an overall more neat experience. It gives people the feeling of a stake in businesses and the community and helps give them a purpose. Think this is a cool idea? Comment below.

About the author 

Pete Baikins

Pete Baikins is an international authority on gamification, a lifelong gamer, successful entrepreneur and a lecturer. As CEO of Gamification+ Ltd he mentors and trains companies world-wide on the use of gamification to solve business challenges. Gamification+ won the Board of Trade Award from the UK's Department of International Trade in January 2019.

Pete is co-host of the health gamification podcast Health Points and is also Chair of Gamification Europe, the annual conference for Gamification practitioners.

Pete is an Honorary Ambassador for GamFed (International Gamification Confederation), having previously been the Chair from 2014 to February 2019, whose aim is to spread best practices within and support the gamification industry.

After 15 years as a Lecturer on gamification and entrepreneurship at the University of Brighton he now guest lectures on Gamification at King’s College London and at ESCP Europe at post-graduate and under-graduate levels.

Over the past 20 years Pete has built and sold two businesses. One was in security software and the more recent one was a telecoms and internet connectivity business. He is also an Ambassador for Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce in the UK.

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