Social media is becoming an increasingly integral part of how people do business, and with new social media networks popping up seemingly every other week, it becomes harder for businesses to budget their time and resources towards maintaining an effective social media presence.

You may have heard about Pinterest, a visual “pinboard style” sharing site created in 2010 that allows users to save images from anywhere on the internet onto a personal page. In less than two years, Pinterest has become an influential network and a major traffic source, with a referral rate higher than Twitter, and greater than YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn combined. By January of 2012, Pinterest boasted about 2.2 million daily and 12 million monthly active users, and by March it had more than 21 million unique visitors, more than tripling it’s numbers from December. Believe it or not, Pinterest is now the third most popular social network behind Twitter and Facbeook. With that kind of user base and rapid growth, it’s a social media force to be reckoned with, and certainly not one your business should ignore.

While Pinterest doesn’t specifically offer business-oriented features like many other social media sites do now, there are a number of unique characteristics about Pinterest that set it apart as a social media site. Here are some of the most important things you should know first if you’re considering using Pinterest for your business.

Pinterest is designed for purely visual sharing, allowing users to pin or re-pin images of things they’re interested in from all over the internet. What this means for businesses is that they can post images of their products to Pinterest that anyone can reshare.

Pinterest’s user base is more than 80% female and their most popular interests are fashion and beauty, food, interior design, hobbies/leisure, and arts and crafts. Because of this, many retailers, cooking magazines, and lifestyle magazines have seen great success on Pinterest.

People are using Pinterest to directly express their interests. For a business, this type of user information is not unlike a focus group and can be extremely valuable.

Unlike Facebook, anyone can follow anyone they like on Pinterest. There are no privacy options, which means that whatever images you pin can become visible to anyone else. Users are individually responsible for having permission to use any images they post on Pinterest, though like other social networks it is rarely policed.

Now that you have the prerequisites, here are the top 5 things your business should be doing once you’re on Pinterest:

1. Use Pinterest to tell your story. Don’t talk directly about yourself, but rather, share interests, thoughts, or helpful information that your followers are interested in. In turn, your followers will share more with you. Much in the same way that Twitter is a “conversation,” Pinterest boards “tell a story” and allow your business to use a collection of images to present an overall picture of itself, and we all know the saying about a picture and a thousand words!

2. Have a strategy. Decide what ideas or products you want to share with your followers, and then try to put those ideas/products into an image that people will be drawn in by. This is especially important for businesses whose products may not be particularly attention-grabbing visually.

3. Integrate. Let people know you’re on Pinterest and make it easy for them to find your page by adding a Pinterest button right next to the rest of your social media icons on your website.

4. Engage your audience. Allow your followers to pin to your page and encourage more interaction. Users are notified every time someone comments on or repins one of their posts from your page, increasing their interaction with you and making them more likely to repin more of your posts.

5. Learn something. Your business can use Pinterest to collect consumer specific data about the type of people that buy yours or your competitors’ products. What do they think of your products? What else are they interested in? Where else are you likely to be able to reach your audience? Each user’s collection of pins tells their story, make sure you’re listening!

‘Pinterested’ in some assistance? Let us help you tell your story. Contact us to discuss your social media strategy.

In the past few months, we have conducted the greatest number of consecutive stakeholder interviews in our company’s history. In the process, our already well-evolved methodology was further refined into a tidy set of 12 best practice guidelines. We’d like to share with you our strategies around this often-overlooked yet vital part of successfully designing a website or application.

In most cases, stakeholder interviews are one of the first things we do during a project. Besides the practical value of learning “everything you need to know” about the client’s wants and needs, it establishes rapport that can be vital later on, during the much more intense work of architecting, designing and developing.

Our interview process usually culminates in a Project Summary deliverable that all stakeholders receive and review to ensure our assumptions are clear and correct. This also gives our team its first opportunity to define the scope of the project on paper. After our stakeholders give feedback, their sign-off on the Project Summary gets the entire development process rolling.

So, without further ado, here are our 12 Best Practices for Stakeholder Interviews in Web Development, arranged from start to finish:

1. Identify Stakeholder Interviews During Kick-Off Meeting

We make it a point to determine who the primary stakeholders are within our clients’ organizations as part of our kick-off meeting agenda. Besides the people on the call or in the room, it occasionally takes some poking around to identify other key players on the client’s team. Don’t leave the meeting without their names and contact information. The number of interviews you plan should be relative to the scope of the project. For smaller projects, you may find yourself talking to one or two key people, larger projects might have you interviewing entire teams.

2. Get One-on-One

It may be tempting from a scheduling standpoint to interview stakeholders as a group, but we usually recommend against this for one simple reason: Stakeholders are more likely to give you their unfiltered perspective one-on-one. The point of these interviews is to find the discrepancies and consistencies in disparate opinions on the same subject. Team interviews defeat this purpose as groups tend toward consensus opinions. Furthermore, one-on-one interviews built better rapport and are simply easier to conduct than group interviews.

3. Schedule Strategically (When Possible)

Stakeholders are often very in-demand, and sometimes you just have to take the schedule you get. Whenever possible, there are two strategic rules we try to follow when scheduling. First, set up your interviews in order of seniority. This allows you to start with a high-level perspective and drill down to more granular accounts. Second, try to schedule all interviews in close succession. This makes it far easier to “be present” with the details project as you work toward a deeper understanding.

4. Know Your Subjects and Your Subject Matter

Make every effort to learn more about both your interview subjects and the work you will be discussing. If you don’t know your subjects’ roles and responsibilities within the context of the project before your interview, this makes a great first question. Knowing what they do will frame every question you ask. But even if you have to go in blind, you must know your subject matter. Visit every website, read every memo and be prepared to talk very specifically about any collateral you’ve collected thus far. Your inquiry can only go as deep as your understanding of the subject matter.

5. Write a Well-Organized Questionnaire

No matter how good you are an interviewing people, writing out your questions and organizing them by type is the critical step in the stakeholder interview process. First, outline your questionnaire by identifying the broad categories of interest you wish to learn more about. For example, common web development question categories include “Content”, “Design” and “Administration”. By organizing in this fashion, the Project Summary deliverable can be generated much from the same outline. Make quick modifications to your questionnaire after each interview based on what worked and what didn’t, but keep the structure the same.

6. Ask the Right Questions, and the Right Type of Questions

Open-ended questions are an interviewer’s best friend. They open the conversation up to more specific inquiries. For example, ask how the stakeholder would define a success in this project, or what major challenges they foresee. Your questionnaire should consist of broad questions on the topics you’ve outlined, while your specific questions should be drawn from the stakeholder’s answers as well as your research. Think of your questionnaire as a “checklist” of must-discuss items, so as the conversation develops organically you can make sure all your topical bases are covered.

7. Mostly Listen, but State Key Assumptions

Obviously, interviewing is about listening, not talking. But it’s not a bad idea to state a few of your key assumptions about the project to gauge your understanding. You’ll find your subject will be very eager to correct any misconceptions. When your assumptions prove spot-on, they boost client confidence and save you time from “going down that road” with a line of questioning.

8. Be Prepared for All Types of Interview Subjects

For every stakeholder that won’t stop talking unless you interrupt them, there’s someone who answers every question in a single sentence. C-class executives may have more important things to do than talk to you, cutting your carefully planned 60-minute interview to 10 minutes. Conversely, junior-level employees may be able to tell you everything they know about the project in five minutes. In our experience, the best way to prepare for all contingencies is to follow tips #4 and #5.

9. Always Have the Next Question in Mind

There is an art to interviews that mainly involves making a question-and-answer session feel more like a conversation. This puts both interviewer and subject at ease, which makes for better and more insightful answers. The key to pulling this off: Immediately after asking a question, have your next questions mentally “on deck”. Always be a step ahead of your subject. Simultaneously, you must be able to dynamically change course based on their response. If their answer starts going in another direction, switch your “on deck” question to match.

10. Take Notes

Many studies suggest taking notes improves memory recall. From experience, we can say that note-taking helps, particularly with summarizing the mountain of information we collect during interviews. Foremost, note any ‘a ha’ moments or particularly insightful stakeholder quotes. These will factor heavily in your Project Summary. You’ll also want to note any unanswered questions that can’t be addressed in the time allotted, and any major challenges you’re picking up on. If your stakeholders don’t mind it, record the conversation. Having a record of these interviews can help tremendously down the line as you try to recall specific information. Often times when new questions emerge post-discovery, we can go back to the recorded interviews to find the answer. Our well-organized questionnaire from step #5 helps us quickly locate answers by subject.

11. End the Conversation with Next Steps

Don’t leave your subject hanging — end your interview by clearly explaining what your team’s next steps are. This way, everyone on their team feels “in the loop” even if your only interaction with them during the whole project is during that interview. If there are follow-up tasks you need from the stakeholder (for example, providing access credentials), make sure to mention them before hanging up.

12. Write Your Project Summary Immediately After the Interviews

After a marathon run of interviews it’s easy to feel a bit overwhelmed by the project. However, the worst thing you could do is try to “clear your head”. The relationships stored up in your neurons are the real gold of the stakeholder interview process. We highly recommend writing your Project Summary immediately after the interviews are complete. This way, your deliverable will capture all of your focus and insight before it dissipates.

Want us to discover your winning web development strategy? Our inbox is always open!

As part scientific study, part custom web application, this project presented us with some unique challenges. Users were asked to complete detailed surveys on their personal health histories and interests before, during, and after the study, which was to take place over a full year. Survey data had to be anonymized and secured to ensure the privacy of participants.

On the web application side, we were tasked with custom-building a content management system that allowed staff to produce a large volume of health tips. We then had to anonymously set up each user to receive certain categories of tips based on their survey input. All email and website content would be published to these users on an automated schedule and each user group would be activated at a different time requiring sophisticated staggering of content. Thus, our core challenge was to provide a consistent user experience to ensure the integrity of the study across multiple users and time frames.

Our web application was built from the ground up on Ruby on Rails, with a completely custom CMS that allowed our client to manage and schedule hundreds of unique health tips. Other features of this custom admin included an analytics dashboard for tracking site activity and role-based user management for both staff and constituents.

After much research, we deployed our health questionnaires by leveraging a robust and secure open-source survey system. With the survey enjoying the iron-clad security of our highly custom hosting environment (maintained exclusively for our clients), we worked closely with The Monday Campaigns and Johns Hopkins University to QA each and every survey question.

Our clients are thrilled with the finished application, which is now smoothly running each user group toward its one-year study period. Feedback from users has been positive as well, with one referring to the Healthy Monday Tips website as a “motivation machine”. Every Monday, users receive their scheduled Healthy Monday Tip reminder email, which directs them to log in to the Healthy Monday Tips website. Once logged in, the user views an ‘inbox’ of unread tips which they can choose to try or to ignore. The user can also check off tips they tried, rate their usefulness and add them to a ‘top tips’ favorites list.

We’re all so excited with our work to contributing to the public’s better heath that we’ve already begun our next web development project with The Monday Campaigns. We see a mutually bright and healthy future ahead!

These are exciting times for enterprise application designers. One in five Americans now own a tablet device, featuring tactile user interfaces and high-resolution displays. What has emerged is a bumper crop of new business apps and services that make the most of these high-resolution interactive interfaces. As a result, some companies have seriously sexified the beige-stained legacy of clunky corporate software and services.

For pure sexiness we’ll focus on the iPad, the world’s favorite tablet device by far. Adam Bookman over at iPad development agency Propelics recently published three reasons why the iPad is the perfect platform for business intelligence software. He cherry-picks his favorites from ReadWrite Enterprise‘s list of their top 10 business intelligence tools for the iPad while cautioning that the iPad isn’t meant to be a virtual desktop. All of these posts lead back to this prediction from Garner Research (now, that’s a lot of blog recursion!): Gartner claims that by 2013, 33 percent of business intelligence functionality will be consumed via handheld devices, and with apps this smokin’, who are we to question their wisdom?

We took a look at the landscape, and while we’re not giving up the sheer robust power of long-established analytics/BI suites like Google Analytics or Omniture, we have to admit their interfaces look a touch bloated compared to the svelte supermodel facade of this new crop of iPad apps.

Roambi

You can’t beat Roambi for sheer sexiness, with its sleek black UI punctuated by bold, fashionable colors. Though the name sounds like some strange mashup of Rambo and Bambi, there’s nothing either campy or cute about this strictly professional suite. Roambi provides a secure and simple solution focused on comfort and speed. What it lacks in robust functionality options it more than makes up for in intuitive design.

What can we learn from their interface? The thing you immediately notice about Roambi is that almost everything you touch reveals a new layer of functionality. When you touch a pie chart, you can spin it to get details on one of its slices. You can pinch to define date ranges, with results instantaneously presented in a floating box. Some of the app’s “Squares” views are reminiscent of Windows 7, but with even better tactile response. All the little, “wow, cool” moments like these make this app irresistibly sexy. We’d like to tell you about all the amazing UI ideas packed into this app, but you really have to download it and give it a try (both on iPad and iPhone). It’s free and pre-loaded with data so you can see the magic before you’ve got your own info loaded up.

Cyfe

New BI suite Cyfe has a blazin’ hot look and feel, with what’s becoming the industry standard of app attractiveness — an overall dark theme punctuated by hot colors. Whether you’re on desktop, tablet or mobile, the user experience is seamlessly sexy. Drag-and-drop widgets form a dashboard of analytics, pulled from dozens of APIs from all the leading sites and services. The GUI couldn’t be simpler, and in seconds you’ll be linked up to all the important data you need at a glance. What it lacks in robust analytics functionality it makes up for in ease of use. I cannot imagine a quicker progression from setup to sailing unless the software read my mind. The widgets refresh every 10 seconds, so Cyfe is perfect for the kind of real-time analytics wide-screen displays we’ve seen trending in startup offices across the country.

Like Roambi, Cyfe is freemium. It’s free to sign in and setup, but to get more than 5 widgets your subscription fee will start at $9/month. For sheer cost-effective sexiness, you can’t go wrong with the Basic 20-widget plan. True addicts can pay up to $49/mo. for 100 widgets, though I imagine at that point you’d be ready to trade up to a “real” analytics platform. Then again, why not rock a 4-screen wall of analytics if it makes you feel like a C class god.

Yellowfin

Yellowfin introduced its own robust BI tablet app, late last year. The first thing you’ll notice is that Yellowfin is jam-packed with powerful and versatile features. Its dashboards may lack the UI allure of Roambi and Cyfe, but the gap is bridged with much, much more functionality. The custom reporting features alone blow similar apps out of the water — it’s entirely possible that an exec could put together a great sales presentation while standing on line at the coffee shop. With a great, free development kit and easy integration into almost any app technology, Yellowfin demands serious consideration.

The Others

There are literally dozens of these BI tools filling up the app stores right now, so it’s both an exciting and confusing time for those in the market for tablet analytics. Roambi, Cyfe and Yellowfin stand out for their aesthetics, utility and accessibility. They are by no means the only options. If you’re an Oracle fan — there’s an app for that. Into Salesforce.com? Your CRM BI is covered on the tablet too. Is Google Analytics more your speed? There are several apps for that… none of them are particularly stunning but they do exist — at least as long as Google takes to introduce its killer BI tablet app.

In all, it’s a great time to be an executive, or any kind of real-time data watcher. The tools to make sense — and even beauty — out of this cascade of data are arriving in the nick of time.

We have to shake our heads at analysts who call the iBooks announcement underwhelming or say self-publishing is a fad. The reality is that interactive books and self-publishing are two markets in their infancy, but both will be quite grown up in a matter of years, not decades. Even at the lightning pace of digital technology, it will take a while to unseat a 200-year technology as treasured as the printed book. This is especially true when the roughly 129,864,880 books published to date are quite un-interactive and don’t have much to gain from going digital outside of the intrinsic interactivity of the medium, like the ability to dynamically search and index text.

This incredible story about a writer who made a record-breaking $100,000 in three weeks succinctly illustrates Amazon’s leadership of the market, as well as the primacy of the platform as marketing powerhouse. Try telling a writer that self-publishing isn’t the future. The author mentioned above, Joe Konrath, puts it best in his own words: “This has now become the best way in the history of mankind for a writer to earn money. It may be one of the greatest ways to ever make money, period.”

The real story of yesterday’s announcement was not iBooks 2, the revamped iTunes U or any of the educational initiatives. The question of whether Apple can save education is interesting, and the interactive textbooks and cloud-based curriculums go a long way to trying. The bigger question concerns who wins the Apple vs. Amazon battle over self publishing. Of course, we can’t automatically count Google out. They’ve scanned most of those boring non-interactive books and have a self-publishing platform of their own.

The real meat of Apple’s announcement was the free iBooks Author app, which demystifies interactive book design and publishing by drawing on that classic Apple UX magic. This is where Amazon and Google have been severely lacking — in an HTML5 world, many of today’s eBooks feel very HTML 1.0. iBooks Author could change all that, making reading on a tablet or other mobile device a truly enhanced experience.

There is, of course, a catch — as there often is with Apple’s “walled garden” strategy. Ars Technica points out that the end user licensing agreement forces the publisher into an exclusive sales contract if they use the iBooks Author software. This underscores how fierce and aggressive the competition is over this market. The article goes on to detail squabbling over the open ePub format and the inherent challenges in maintaining good design while dynamically flowing text for any size and type of device.

This “walled garden” can have its benefits, too. Besides the obvious business advantage, it’s easier for Apple to provide a more consistent and therefore richer user experience across all devices. Also, Amazon has struggled with copyright infringement as their open platform is plagued with unauthorized duplicates of popular works. If a too-far-reaching copyright bill like SOPA was to pass, Amazon would be in hot water for facilitating this infringement. This is to say nothing of continued legal challenges for Google, undermining their grand vision of a globally accessible online library.

The long game is interesting and by no means certain. In our estimation, Amazon looks hard to beat. Writers will certainly balk at the exclusive licensing agreement, and it will take a new generation of authors to harness the power of interactive books. eInk readers are inexpensive and preferred by many dedicated readers. Amazon has the brand recognition as the world’s biggest bookstore and the Kindle is synonymous with reading. Perhaps the biggest factor is Amazon’s perceived strategy to drive the cost of the Kindle down to “free”, finding it more profitable to get the devices in as many hands as possible and just rake in the dough by selling content. We’ll be watching… and reading closely.

After Twitter played a major role in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak in Egypt earlier this year, no one could argue that Twitter arrived in 2011 as a mainstream force to be reckoned with. Last weekend, Twitter was blamed for spreading rumors that started a bank run in Sweden. Ignoring Twitter is becoming less of an option for the informed citizen.

Yet despite its status as powerful global communication platform, many stayed away due to the perceived tech-savvy barrier of entry. Many more signed up, tweeted a few times, and lost interest.

Consider that Twitter’s formidable 100M users are dwarfed by the 800M on Facebook, and is far easier to understand than Facebook. With a revamped Twitter in 2012, that disparity could start to dwindle. What Twitter needs — and what it seems prepared to provide — is a Twitter that appeals to everyone. Or, in the words of NY Times columnist Nick Bilton, “A Twitter for My Sister”.

Newbies historically became flummoxed when they encountered Twitter’s ‘@’ and ‘#’ symbols, which are central to the platform’s functionality but inscrutable on their own. Twitter was not very helpful in explaining what these symbols did; you were supposed to learn by watching others. This resulted in a catch-22: You couldn’t use Twitter until you knew what the symbols meant, and you wouldn’t learn what they meant unless you used Twitter.

Now these symbols have been elevated to exalted status as two of the four top-level navigation items (along with the new ‘Me’ and ‘Tweet’ sections). ‘@’ is now titled ‘Connect’ and ‘#’ is referred to as ‘Discover.’ This should go a long way in demystifying the symbols, which represent the true power of Twitter. Use of the ‘@’ symbol to reference a specific user is critical to fueling the interpersonal connections that drive platform use. Similarly, use of the ‘#’ symbol to reference a specific topic is what makes Twitter a ubiquitous barometer of global trends.

For businesses, the big new Twitter addition is the revamped brand page, which is essentially a fancied-up Twitter profile for brands and companies. These new pages feature big, pretty graphic headers that can be customized with logos or brand messaging. Another hot feature: Now brands can pick and choose their own ‘@’ replies and mentions to highlight. This will be great for cutting down on customer service noise and burying users with inane or profane messages.

The other big platform change that will effect all Twitter users is a new crop of official Twitter apps for mobile devices. The company is going for a more consistent look, feel and function set across all devices. It’s been a sore point for Twitter that many of its loyal users choose to type their mobile missives using third-party apps, preferring their richer functionality and nicer UI.

Early response to these new official Twitter apps has been mixed, with some users complaining that functionality was removed from the mobile apps to simplify the UI and make it more consistent across all devices. Others found the apps more pleasant and useful due to their streamlined design. In either case, Twitter has certainly paid closer attention to its integration across mobile devices as of late. The company recently announced a 25% increase in monthly signups, thanks in large part to tighter integration of Twitter into Apple’s iOS 5. Unlike the web changes, the new Twitter apps are available now for iPhone and Android.

Amid all the revamp news, we also were reminded of the future of advertising on Twitter, though no official announcement was made. A self-serve ad platform, like the one Facebook so profitably employs, has been expected from Twitter for some time. Expected early next year, self-serve Twitter ads will likely mark the starting point for a dramatic upward slope in the company’s revenue graphs.

Twitter will celebrate its sixth birthday next July, which is mature by digital standards. It’s come a long way from the platform that many ridiculed for having no plan to make money to 100 million users. With the impending changes, we see the growth of the network hitting new heights, both in terms of user base and profitability. For businesses, we see exciting new opportunities to interact with customers and clients.

If this is your first time hearing about gamification, the typical reaction is, “What a stupid sounding buzzword,” followed by, “But it sounds important. What does it mean?” Let’s ask Wikipedia:

Gamification is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences.

The reason you’re correct to say it’s a stupid buzzword is because gamification is nothing new in and of itself. Anyone who’s been a part of a point-based loyalty program is no stranger to gamification. Everything from frequent flyer points to Camel cash are examples of gamification that predate the popularization of the Web.

What is new is the mobile technology the our world is awash in, and the social networks that constantly transmit the details of our lives. Now that gamification is meeting social and mobile, the result is transforming the very world we live in.

You might already be aware of popular mobile app Foursquare, which best exemplifies the current trend in gamification of awarding achievement badges and points for accomplishing tasks. That’s great and all, and while this kind of social network gamification of social media can change the way we hang out, it’s not really changing the world in a major way.

For sure, big brands are learning to embrace gamification. A few quick examples: The Fun Theory campaign by Volkswagen generated some novel game-inspired ideas to improve our environment and health. The Pepsi Refresh Project uses gamification to drive competition for millions in non-profit funding (a $10,000 prize was recently won by an EMN employee!) Poptent uses badges and prizes to crowdsource the production of video commercial spots from big brands like UPS, Hasbro, Taco Bell and more (not coincidentally, EMN alumni are also money prize winners there too).

But what about outside the world of popular commerce? Beyond corporate-funded marketing programs moonlighting as philanthropy, can gamification actually change the way we live? We believe so, and that’s why we’re offering, as a supporting argument, three websites in three critical subject areas — education, government and work — that are proving that gamification is starting to have a real and profound impact on our lives.

Education – Khan Academy

The story of how hedge fund analyst Salman Khan became one of the most inspiring educators of the 21st century is not to be missed. We encourage you to watch his TED talk and challenge the often-dystopic assumptions about the future of education.

Khan’s video-based learning recently got a serious upgrade in the form of gamification. His video series on high-school mathematics is now accompanied by a “knowledge map” that will be familiar to any RPG or real-time strategy gamer who has used a skill tree to level up their characters. In this format, it provides a real self-motivation to achieve competency in math as Khan tests your knowledge retention by requiring ten consecutive exercises be completed before accessing the next location on the knowledge map. Along with badges and social sharing components, the Khan Academy is one of the most promising applications of gamification. Both Google and Microsoft, among others, are funding the non-profit, making Khan Academy a real candidate for changing the world.

Government – Challenge.gov

You might say the White house is winning with gamification as the Obama administration embraces the latest trend in engagement. Their Challenge.gov site hinges on the popular mashup of gamification and crowdsourcing. Think you’ve got the next great idea for high-tech gloves to protect soldier’s hands as they descend from helicopters on ropes? Perhaps you’re convinced you hold the key to the Department of Transportation’s data visualization needs?

This prize-based stab at national progress comes courtesy of the COMPETES Act that was signed into law about a year ago. While the website itself is certainly more about crowdsourcing, the limited gamification elements (badges for participating in challenges) will surely grow over time. The overall theme of spurring innovation through open competition for prizes with a fair set of rules — that’s pure gamification.

Now faced with a contracting economy, government agencies are championing the program even more as a provider of low-cost solutions to high-tech government challenges. Let the government games continue!

Work – Nitro for SalesForce.com

Believe it or not, even your workplace is about to get gamified. A company called Bunchball created a plugin for SalesForce.com called Nitro that does just that:

Once you get to thinking, many workplaces are already full of gamification. The sales leaderboards of the past, drawn on posterboard in the lunchroom, are now always accessible via an engagement dashboard. Incentives for employee performance are now dangled daily, as displays of everyone’s standing in the competition motivate participation. Employees can be awarded achievement badges for learning new skills or completing tasks instead of less visible pats on the back and private kudos.

As gamification continues to evolve, EMN will be there to evolve alongside. Specialty companies like Bunchball and Badgeville have emerged to service the coming hordes of gamification-seekers, but only development shops such as ours have the kind of well-rounded service offering wherein gamification is but an increasingly important aspect. Contact us if gamification intrigues you as much as it does us, and maybe we can make something fun happen!

Earlier this month, when Kickstarter announced its one millionth backer (and over $75 million dollars raised), it was not just a major milestone for crowd funding. We may look back at this month as a major economic milestone as well.

Crowd funding is a mashup between patronage, fundraising and crowdsourcing. Certainly there’s nothing new in the idea of proposing to do something, setting a financial goal to achieve it, and then spreading word far and wide to many people seeking contributions. But the social Web is so perfectly suited for crowd funding, it’s kind of a wonder it took this long to get such critical mass.

Now the phenomena is sweeping through the worlds of design, technology, publishing, music, film and art in a Renaissance-like explosion of creativity and collaboration. The primacy of social media is unquestionably the driver, making it easier to ‘source’ a crowd than ever in history.

The trajectory of this powerful idea can be traced from Chris Anderson’s game-changing long tail theory which contained the following revelation (all the way back in 2004):

”…our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of ‘hits’ (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

Seven years later, the leading crowd funding site Kickstarter is finally proving Anderson’s apt foresight. From cultivating a massive user base of backers and creatives to innovative features like curated pages and the Kickstarter school, the company has made all the right moves to rise to the top of the long tail market.

It would be a mistake to simply paint Kickstarter as the Google of crowd funding — just as the phenomenon itself helps niche dwellers hook up with niche fans, there are other crowd funding websites popping up to serve specific needs, or offer different takes on the business model.

IndieGoGo has become another popular option, because unlike Kickstarter it does not require users to meet the initial fundraising goal in order to keep the money raised. The tradeoff is a slightly higher cut of the collected funds, but comes with more editorial freedom to propose a wider range of projects.

There are also more sophisticated crowd funding platforms built for very specific reasons, such as the incredible Bandcamp and Sellaband websites for independent musicians. The former offers a dead-simple way for fans to contribute small amounts en masse, while the latter offers a channel of exclusive artist content in exchange for a subscription fee.

The list goes on… see crowdfunder.org for a great post featuring videos of 15 different services pitching their platform in their own words. It’s worth doing a little research to see if there are alternatives to Kickstarter or IndieGoGo that fit your niche more snugly, as new crowd funding ventures are appearing on the scene every day.

Sure, there has yet to be a blockbuster film or product with a genesis in crowd funding, but it’s only a matter of time. This Kickstarter project came darn close, raising nearly one million dollars to fund production of a unique iPod Nano wristband. The important thing to remember is that this trend is not geared to appeal to the masses, but rather niche markets and products. The meme of 1,000 True Fans is not hard to understand — it takes just that many supporters, at $100/year, for an individual to make a comfortable $100,000/year (less service fees).

Nothing short of a crowd funding revolution is taking place, and we here at EMN are closely and eagerly watching the explosive growth of the sector. In fact, this blog post is a spinoff of the research we’ve been doing recently to apply the concept to a number of our projects. In particular, we’re interested in providing white-label crowd funding services that can be under full control of the client. We believe there’s an opportunity to serve the folks who don’t want Kickstarter to take a cut of their funds, and who want their crowd funding platform fully customized and integrated into their existing website infrastructure.

If that’s sounds something you’d be interested in, contact us now to get in on the fun… and the funds.

Fleisher’s – (Disclaimer: we did not design the original Web design, however, we did migrate it from a group of static pages to a WordPress blog and are working on the next generation.) Our latest local project is one that’s got our mouths watering. We’ve recently partnered with Fleisher’s Grass-Fed and Organic Meats, an incredible enterprise dedicated to sustainable (and delicious) sustenance. Their booming business is evident in their recent expansion — they recently opened a prime retail location in Park Slope to compliment their HQ in Kingston. We have partnered with Fleisher’s to provide a variety of digital services, learning how their business works and extending their capabilities with technology. It’s a win-win situation: they get a well-planned digital strategy, and we get a well-fed team!

The process:We started with a full content audit on Fleisher’s existing static site, extracted and catalogued dozens of pages, hundreds of images and thousands of words of copy. Then we replicated the site’s design in WordPress, enabling the client to update their own website, a luxury they had not previously been afforded. Of course, we didn’t just leave the site the way it was, we made numerous tweaks and revisions to clean up navigation and design. We integrated new social and email marketing functionality, and made sure all pages were optimized for search. We migrated their entire Blogspot blog to its new home on their WordPress site, so it could be all be managed in the same place and look nicer to boot. Finally, being the nice folks we are, we sat the staff down for a training session on how to use their new CMS. We’re excited to continue our partnership with Fleisher’s and are already planning the next generation of their website.

O+ Festival – The local festival named after the universal blood type is a unique but simple concept that’s catching the attention of folks beyond our region. For one week, artists from near and far descend on Kingston and do paste-ups of art all over the city, kind of of like sanctioned graffiti. The festival really kicks off on Friday, when every music venue and art gallery in the area begins buzzing with activity, lasting all weekend. Like many festivals of its ilk, O+ engages the whole community.

However, the unique, cool concept behind it will blow your mind: the whole non-profit venture is built around doctors, dentists and other medical professionals trading health care to the artists and musicians in exchange for participating and performing. For one weekend, health care providers take over the Kirkland Hotel and offer a free clinic to the hundreds of O+ musicians, artists and volunteers. It’s a triage situation where those in most need of urgent care get it on site that weekend, while the rest schedule gratis appointments for after the festival.

This year, we volunteered our skills to build a really cool website for the O+ Festival based on QR code scanning. Next to artists’ paste-ups, we placed QR codes to be scanned by mobile devices. When scanned, it brings up a page with information about the artist — a portfolio of selected works, a biography, and a link to the artist’s official website. Whereas in the past visitors were left wondering who created these public works of art, now they can connect with the creator, benefitting both parties. As very enthusiastic patrons of the arts, we’re quite proud of it.

The O+ Festival takes place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Kingston, NY. We hope to see you there!

The process: The concept for the QR code website was ours, and the O+ team embraced it enthusiastically. We started with a quick discovery meeting to hear the suggestions of the team, and then set off to make a set of wireframes to illustrate the functional specifications. Then we created designs, sliced them up and built a custom post type in WordPress to display the artist info. Once everything was up and running, we filled up the site with content by scraping artist websites before handing the site over to the O+ team to finish content population. Lastly, we printed out our QR codes and pasted them up all over town.