Jen Quinlan
Well before my nerdy girl crush on Jane McGonigal, gamification of experience has been a topic of interest to me. So when I heard about BigDoor this past year, I was very excited to see a start-up with a smart solution that could be integrated with clients’ existing content.
Seattle-based BigDoor was founded in 2009 by Keith Smith and Jeff Malek. During a call with them earlier this year, I learned they boast past lives in the publisher space. Their solution provides gaming technology to non-gaming sites.
About BigDoor
BigDoor’s goal is to provide the means for an overall healthier and happier internet ecosystem. This means more enjoyable and relevant time online for users, and more creative revenue opportunities for businesses. When employed skillfully, gamification builds a strong bridge between user desires and business objectives, making the internet a more desirable and valuable place for everyone.
BigDoor is accomplishing this goal by developing a virtual economy platform that helps web developers and digital publishers add customized game mechanics to their sites or apps, thus allowing them to increase user loyalty, better monetize user interactions, and more effectively target new and existing customers.
Big Brands
Brands are catching on. At Dell’s ‘Dell World’ conference this past October, BigDoor was tapped to enhance event attendees’ experience. Keith Smith writes on Dell’s blog:
As an industry, gamification has come a long way since we started our company two years ago. Today we see predictions that by 2015 70% of Global 2,000 businesses will have a gamified app (Gartner, April 2011) and the gamification market will reach $2.8 Billion in US by 2016 (M2 Research, September 2011). At BigDoor we found the concept of using game mechanics to engage communities online to be really compelling. What we see as being truly meaningful to an audience and creating deeper brand loyalty is our utilization of directed user engagement experiences that enable users to earn rewards that are valuable to them.
Keep an eye on BigDoor as a leader in the gamification pack for big brands and publishers into 2012.
