Why People Like Playing Solitaire

by Azam on January 26, 2010

We have all spent hours clicking away during mid summer nights, glaring at our PCs. This post attempts to explain why we and millions around the globe indulge in Solitaire based on 2 theories: illusion of control and prospect theory.
The illusion of control states that when players have to perform some ’skill’ tasks such as [...]

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How YouTube Could Use Certain Game Mechanics To Increase Engagement

by Azam on January 17, 2010

One game mechanic Amy Jo Kim discusses is collections. People have an inherent desire to collect. Collections can be seen in many forms across games, web, and life in general. In Ebay, people want to collect good ratings. Kids may want to collect comic cards. Girls may want to collect various barbie dolls. People like [...]

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What Isn’t Social Media and the Benefits of Social Media

July 11, 2009

As I’ve mentioned before, we will explore many tools, and how brands are using them. Tools are great if we can use them (and it will be important to use them) but let’s understand the purpose.
The situation now is that companies are looking to ‘implement’ ‘social media strategies’ as part of their overall marketing plan. [...]

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8 reasons to use Facebook Connect for your Site

July 5, 2009

Facebook connect is service that can be integrated in sites or web applications. Essentially, it allows people to sign in to a site using their Facebook ID, instead of having to sign up from scratch. Note: Google’s OpenSocial and Twitter’s OAuth are doing similar things.
Data about Facebook connect as is disclosed to SAI :

Publishers using Facebook [...]

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Twitter – Should you invest your time?

July 5, 2009

Twitter is big right now. What’s interesting about twitter as a marketing vehicle is that their community is large and ever-growing. It is much easier to get results where the media are gathered then to try to get the media to come to you. Brands want to be where others already are. A lot of [...]

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The danger of short-term marketing metrics

July 2, 2009

Brands face a challenge to become entities striving for long-term competitive advantage and value, not short-term assets asphyxiated for quarterly profits.
Short term results may be valuable, but are they sending the wrong message?
Establish metrics that measure long term brand health
Sales is a great and unexpendable KPI that marketers cannot ignore.  However, marketers must not ignore [...]

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Why you should care about Facebook Pages

June 29, 2009

What is a Facebook Page?
A Facebook Page, also known as a public profile, enables you to connect with Facebook Users, engage them with content, provide them updates, and leverage Facebook to gain viral distribution. Thats the magic of it. It is very real and real time.
Your fans’ interact with your Facebook Page, mini stories linking [...]

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Welcome to my blog

June 29, 2009

As a surveyor of social media and its cunning stride over the the last few years, I always felt the need to understand the way things are changing before I would try to provide valuable information myself.
Now is the time to change from a surveyor to a purveyor of information. I’m hoping this information changes [...]

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