In this day and age, most businesses know that the only thing important for it to survive is to constantly be on the minds of people. And with the advent of the smart phones and consumers having an always-on connection to the internet, it has become all the more important for businesses to make use of this platform to reach the masses. Most companies are coming up with innovative ad campaigns to have their brand be talked about all the time, multiple times, and hope that they stay in a good light.
However, let us have a look at one company that is not spending a penny on advertising, yet is reaping ship-loads of money by having consumers the world over do their work for them. This company I am talking about is Google, and here are three instances detailing how they achieve this feat. Google resorted to Gamification, that is, a method of using an incentive system to keep the participants interested in the continuing to perform some tasks.
Google Image Labeler:
Google had a huge library of images that it sourced from all over the internet. However, it was faced with a problem. These images did not have labels to them. The Google Search Engine did not know that a particular image could be retrieved when a user typed a particular image name.
So what Google did was, create a game, where any two people play a game over the internet. In this game, an unlabeled image is presented to both the gamers. The moment one user starts typing the description to the image, the other user will have to follow typing as closely as possible with the same description that the first user intended to type.
For example, if the image was of a glass of water, the first user could start typing "G L A S S". The moment the user types a "G", the second user must guess what he must be typing, and also start typing "G L A S S". The closes he is to the first user, the more points he gets.
In case the first user started typing "W A T E R", then the second user would have followed with the same description.
So in the end, a particular image that Google did not know the label of, ended up having multiple descriptions. In the example, it is "Glass" and "Water". And from then on, when a computer user searches for a "Glass of Water", Google would most likely retrieve this image and display it.
Ingress:
Google Maps is a pretty robust application, with a very good set of up-to-date maps. Larry Page, in order to test out the feasibility of creating maps when he first conceptualized the idea, had set out around Palo Alto with a camera in hand, and just drove around the city, recording it all. Google employs personnel to drive around cities around the world and record them.
However, they are now testing a different approach, through the use of a smart phone game called Ingress. In this game, players who sign up for it, are teamed up randomly with others. These players can join one of two factions, both pitted against each other. Ingress gives you a location that you can walk over and use your smart phone to indicate that you have reached the place. If a gamer belonging to one faction reaches the place before one of another faction does, the earlier gamer's entire faction score points.
And while a gamer was walking over to the location, Google was all the while recording your speed of travel, the short cuts you were using, etc. So basically, it is using the gamer to map out the best way, or at least the most frequented way, from point A to point B. This path may not necessarily be the same as what Google Maps indicates.
Hence, Google is intelligently mapping out an even more robust application using the consumers.
ReCaptcha:
If you have ever purchased anything or registered anywhere online, you would most likely know what the ReCaptcha code is. There are basically two words that you need to type in order to show you are a human and not a bot that is registering.
Of these two words, only one of them is a word that the computer knows the meaning of. The second word is one that has been scanned from a physical book, and Google could not translate into a digital format yet. When you type the known word correctly, the software assumes that you are going to type the second unknown word also correctly.
When a few thousand users type the same word for the unknown image, the software then knows the actual translation, and converts the physical copy to a digital one. All the work has been done by the users without them even realizing it.
The last case does not involve the concepts of gamification, but is similar in concept to the crowd sourcing techniques Google employs to run its business. As a business, it becomes extremely important to think out-of-the-box, and do more things at as less a cost as possible.
However, let us have a look at one company that is not spending a penny on advertising, yet is reaping ship-loads of money by having consumers the world over do their work for them. This company I am talking about is Google, and here are three instances detailing how they achieve this feat. Google resorted to Gamification, that is, a method of using an incentive system to keep the participants interested in the continuing to perform some tasks.
Google Image Labeler:
Google had a huge library of images that it sourced from all over the internet. However, it was faced with a problem. These images did not have labels to them. The Google Search Engine did not know that a particular image could be retrieved when a user typed a particular image name.
So what Google did was, create a game, where any two people play a game over the internet. In this game, an unlabeled image is presented to both the gamers. The moment one user starts typing the description to the image, the other user will have to follow typing as closely as possible with the same description that the first user intended to type.
For example, if the image was of a glass of water, the first user could start typing "G L A S S". The moment the user types a "G", the second user must guess what he must be typing, and also start typing "G L A S S". The closes he is to the first user, the more points he gets.
In case the first user started typing "W A T E R", then the second user would have followed with the same description.
So in the end, a particular image that Google did not know the label of, ended up having multiple descriptions. In the example, it is "Glass" and "Water". And from then on, when a computer user searches for a "Glass of Water", Google would most likely retrieve this image and display it.
Ingress:
Google Maps is a pretty robust application, with a very good set of up-to-date maps. Larry Page, in order to test out the feasibility of creating maps when he first conceptualized the idea, had set out around Palo Alto with a camera in hand, and just drove around the city, recording it all. Google employs personnel to drive around cities around the world and record them.
However, they are now testing a different approach, through the use of a smart phone game called Ingress. In this game, players who sign up for it, are teamed up randomly with others. These players can join one of two factions, both pitted against each other. Ingress gives you a location that you can walk over and use your smart phone to indicate that you have reached the place. If a gamer belonging to one faction reaches the place before one of another faction does, the earlier gamer's entire faction score points.
And while a gamer was walking over to the location, Google was all the while recording your speed of travel, the short cuts you were using, etc. So basically, it is using the gamer to map out the best way, or at least the most frequented way, from point A to point B. This path may not necessarily be the same as what Google Maps indicates.
Hence, Google is intelligently mapping out an even more robust application using the consumers.
ReCaptcha:
If you have ever purchased anything or registered anywhere online, you would most likely know what the ReCaptcha code is. There are basically two words that you need to type in order to show you are a human and not a bot that is registering.
Of these two words, only one of them is a word that the computer knows the meaning of. The second word is one that has been scanned from a physical book, and Google could not translate into a digital format yet. When you type the known word correctly, the software assumes that you are going to type the second unknown word also correctly.
When a few thousand users type the same word for the unknown image, the software then knows the actual translation, and converts the physical copy to a digital one. All the work has been done by the users without them even realizing it.
The last case does not involve the concepts of gamification, but is similar in concept to the crowd sourcing techniques Google employs to run its business. As a business, it becomes extremely important to think out-of-the-box, and do more things at as less a cost as possible.
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