It’s Good To Be The Guru!

I’m having a lot of fun playing two social games right now – Glue and Foursquare. Foursquare connects you and your friends around the places you visit offline (restaurants, shops, movie theaters etc) and Glue connects you and your friends around the popular sites you visit online (like Amazon, Last.fm, Netflix, Yelp and Wikipedia). Both services allow you to share your experiences about your favorite places and stuff you love in real time with your friends, as well as earn rewards, unlock achievements and compete for bragging rights.

The inspiration for this post is that AdaptiveBlue (creators of Glue) launched a completely revamped version of their site GetGlue.com today. The new site adds a few new dimensions to the service and really enhances the social feel of the game. With the new site you can build your public profile, get a stream of suggestions based on your interests, see your friends’ activity and find out what’s popular right now on the web. Here’s a 1 minute video that shows you how it works.

The compelling part of Glue for me is how social the service is – you learn a lot about your friends while you explore the web and discuss your experiences together. Not only do you bump into your friends all around the web, you get a really good idea of who people are and what they (are) like from their profiles. There’s really nothing else like this one the internet today – the guys building these games are definitely charting new territory and creating new ways to create meaningful and enjoyable experiences from the every day stuff we do with the web. Here’s a screenshot of my profile – you can see lists of books, music and movies I like, restaurants I recommend and who my friends are. You can also see how active I am in the game – I’ve unlocked a ton of achievement stickers and I’m the resident expert (guru) of 95 things I like.

It’s Good To Be The Guru

One aspect of the game that’s a lot more fun than I expected is fighting for the title of Guru. Jason Gaylor and I battled it out the other day for the Guru of Fire (topic).  I couldn’t stop laughing. The second I stole the title from him, he’d steal it back – we went back and forth commenting on each other’s posts for a whole day. Ok….I admit that’s really geeky and lame, but the experience made me see how fun and compelling the guru concept is. Think about it….as of this writing, there are tens of thousands of people already using the service, and Glue displays the Guru’s avatar whenever anyone on the service visits any given object/topic on any site. If you really care about a topic, book, movie, restaurant, being recognized as the resident expert can help you get found and recognized by people who also care about the topic and help you connect with them….I can see reviewers, authors, researchers and restaurant owners getting a lot of real-world value out of this. While being a “mayor” of a place in Foursquare or being the “Guru” of something on Glue is a very new concept, it’s definitely an important element of these new social games that have a lot of potential to impact how we experience the web as well as our offline worlds in the future.  Remember – we’re already seeing restaurants and stores offer mayors on Foursquare freebies and discounts. This is just the beginning. Expect to see a lot more innovation around this concept in the coming years.

That’s it from me for now…if you’re on Glue or Foursquare, come find me and friend me up. See you around the web. Game on!