When does F-Commerce Work for Brands?

The push for Facebook Commerce (known sometimes as the more exciting F-Commerce) has seemingly increased throughout the later parts of 2011 and the early bits of 2012. As more brands embrace the 'F-Commerce' trend, its not only worth stepping back and analyzing exactly when the concept can work for a product, but also what Facebook Commerce actually entails. Stepping away from the most clear example of commerce on Facebook, micropurchases for in game content, and focusing more on product transaction opportunities, the line between promotion and commerce seemingly blurs.

What is F-Commerce vs. Sales Promotion?

Driving purchase on Facebook is a much broader concept than just a Facebook store and therefore begs the question, where does external network promotion (voucher codes and other sales promotions) end and proper 'F-Commerce' start.

Activities such as posting voucher codes and product give-aways have been a developed part of Facebook for much longer than the current e-commerce push, but have recently refined to include activity based discounts through functions such as Facebook Deals. While promotional links, fan page giveaways, branded applications & check-in deals may speed the consumer's journey down the purchase process, they exist more distinctly as 'Sales Promotion' activities than F-Commerce.

If the previous activities are placed firmly in the SP arena, then explicit Facebook Commerce activities must involve opening a direct path to purchase for the consumer. While sales promotion may drive consumers to purchase through traditional methods, F-Commerce instead opens new avenues to purchase or fundamentally shortens existing avenues. So far, 3 broad approaches to a Facebook Commerce model have been tried:

1.) Single Product Purchase
 An evolved form of the product give away sales promotion mechanic, singular product stores (such as Heinz's launch of their Balsamic Vinegar Ketchup) can, at a low price point, harness a similar mechanic to giveaways, while defraying the cost of golds sold and shipping required in the promotion.

2.) Static In-Network Storefront
The majority of Facebook stores seem to have taken this approach, with either a boutique selection or full range of products being offered in what is essentially a Facebook reproduction of their initial store experience. While brands have managed to leverage the social power of Facebook, through either clever activity of their fan bases or curating an interesting product selection (in the case of stores such as Roots Canada). Though retailers can currently leverage the novelty of Facebook store fronts, coupled with developed fan bases, to drive interest in static stores, Facebook based commerce seems to be rapidly requiring a more developed offering to drive user interest.

3.) Socially Enabled Storefronts
Making a Facebook Storefront more effective than a static deployment is where the true power of Facebook Commerce becomes clear. While stores such as Best Buy's 'Shop + Share' may not directly link purchase within Facebook, its use of a social recommendation feature (allowing friends to provide feedback on possible purchases) shows how F-Commerce storefronts can leverage the inherent power of Facebook and a user's friends to bridge new paths to purchase. It isn't true 'F-Commerce' in the strictest as the price of products on offer may still require a transaction to occur on the retailer's site (easing consumer concerns about security and allowing for easier integration to existing stock systems), but it indicates where social reference can aid commerce going forward.

What Products Work with F-Commerce?

So if F-Commerce is a combination of increasing stock on offer and store front functionality, working in concert with sales promtion techniques and brand engagement, what approach works best for various products?

Though their are many different ways to classify products, two sets of categorizations that work for products on Facebook are involvement and social visibility. Involvement roughly entails the amount of thought and resource a consumer dedicates into considering the purchase of a product. High Involvement products (such as a TV, Car, Life Insurance etc.) involve a large amount of consideration of alternatives and even whether to purchase at all. Low Involvement products involve little consideration and can entail routinized or quick purchases (such as grocery products, cleaning goods and generally low priced items). In driving purchase, the challenge in marketing high involvement products is providing information and purchase justification, while low involvement products require disrupting the consumer's normal routine/gaining attention to drive consideration and purchase.

Social Visibility involves the extent to which a product purchase is visible and influenced by friends/family and external reference groups. Low Social Visibility products involve those that are relatively private (such as life insurance, home improvements), while High Social Visibility products are those that have social capital and/or play a social role as a possible status item (i.e. a Car, home, TV, designer clothing).

Graphing involvement against visibility, 4 general categories start to form for possible products on Facebook. High Involvement/Low Social Visibility products (such as bank accounts and insurance) show the worst initial possibilities for F-Commerce given their required level of consideration and the lack of any real benefit from social features.

Ignoring that quadrant, the remaining three each show different opportunities, risks & alternatives to creating F-Commerce channels. As shown, high involvement products risk losing direct links to conversion (stemming from price or reluctance to purchase within network), while lower involvement products must articulate either their social benefits (high social visibility) or ease to purchase (low social visibility). Within each, if quadrant specific risks aren't addressed by an F-Commerce strategy, alternatives such as traditional or dynamic sales promotion may work as a more efficient solution.

While Low Involvement/Socially Visible products seem to be the most prominent driver for in-Facebook purchase currently, this may change as commerce possibilities are refined and the new features are launched. The opportunities for higher involvement products may lie in the retooling of Facebook Deals coming soon, which focuses more on a Groupon type hyperlocal buying model. Such a service may bridge the gap between F-Commerce and existing sales promotion mechanics, creating new opportunities to drive sales amongst a variety of products.

Want to Know Where Facebook is Going in the UK? Look at AOL in the US 1990's...

Before you read the title of this and make any early decisions, realize that the similarities between Facebook, now, and AOL, in the 90's, aren't necessarily bad. Given Facebook's current prominence, with 550 million+ users and a penchant for rolling out new product offerings rather regularly, similarities exist between both user bases relative to competitors and rate of development. While AOL's time may have come and gone as the central portal for the internet, the move from then to the internet we know today, may indicate where Facebook is aiming to take us.

If you didn't get one of these in the 1990's, you weren't checking the mail enough....

A comparison involving AOL in its hey day may conjure up certain memories (ever-present cd mailers, paying to play such cutting edge games as SNIPER), but its worth going back and highlighting exactly how prominent the ISP/portal was in the market. AOL's role wasn't just as a site or a network, but, given the lack of any real broadband until the late 90's, also as the actual connection to the internet.

Once connected, AOL offered a consolidated internet experience, providing user communication (chat, IM, email), media sharing/identities (message boards, photos, profiles) & entertainment (shopping & games). AOL's walled garden was the primary destination for users to do everything they needed, with the rest of the internet being offered primarily through the AOL branded web browser. The network structure allowed the brand to be in control of almost all of the user experience, sitting as a layer between the user and the rest of the internet, though it also required that a large amount of development be done in house.

Source: Pew Research Center

 As broadband increases, dial up internet peaks in 2001, before declining to negligible numbers today.

AOL's heavy development requirements became increasingly important as external internet access/broadband penetration increased competition from other options. AOL's connectivity offering granted the network a position as a user's first destination within the internet. However, as dial up penetration began to decline and broadband share moved to replace it, AOL found itself reinventing as a content portal instead of just an ISP, throwing down any part of the 'walled garden' it once used. Once competition raged, the variety of growing internet content left AOL knocked well below its original prominence and users going to multiple sites based on their content needs.

I realize this chart is a rather general estimation of 5-8 years of very complex internet development, but running out of logo space is running out of logo space.

The internet post central ISPs such as AOL is the fragmented, but robust offering of recent memory (or possibly still currently). As generalist sites/portals such as AOL were beat by specialist offerings (why not go game at a site like Yahoo! games or Newgrounds), the primary location of internet users became a sequence of daily destinations. This ordering of daily sites led to micro-struggles for prominence within categories, instead of a macro-competition. While before, the competition was AOL vs. competitors or AOL vs. the disparate internet, struggles now existed between singular sites and networks. For example, within Microblogging, sites such as Pownce gave way to Twitter and Tumblr, with each competing to be the user's main destination within the sector, not overall.

Throughout this phase of development, social networking displayed some of the most fierce competition, both within the sector and with their media sharing/microblogging/etc. neighbors. The competition between Myspace and Facebook occurred simultaneously with a battle between social networks and media hosting sites, as both aimed to be the user's destination to share media. As the dust settles, we find ourselves in the current network ecosystem. Facebook has emerged as the mass market social network de jour, with 550+ million users, while networks such as Linkedin and Myspace (which recently added Facebook connect) focus on building interest networks and widening the overall ecosystem. The struggle between neighboring sectors and social media has been abated by integration, allowing for an overall media sharing network which allows content to move between each, aiding media sites in traffic and Facebook et. al. in capacity.

It is this overall ecosystem that has positioned Facebook in a similar space as our starting point with AOL. The network has grown to feature a robust internal and external network of content, strengthening its position as not only the most prominent site in a user's daily online destinations, but aiming to move into a different category, a layer slightly above the internet. Looking at current features on Facebook, it seems to increasingly mirror that of the ISP AOL, as it internally offers:

-Communications (groups, IM, status updates, notes & most recently Facebook Message Center)
-Shopping/Marketing (Marketplace, Pages)
-Entertainment (Apps, Games) 
-Content Sharing (Photos, Video, Profiles)
In this sense, Facebook has aimed to consolidate utility for the visitor, keeping a product offering more diverse and useful than most competitors can provide.

Unlike AOL , no purely walled garden exists for Facebook as any shortcomings are strengthened through integration (i.e. Shopping on Amazon.com or brand websites using features  such as Facebook Connect, Blogs or Microblogs can be syndicated easily to pages or the news feed), extending the reach of the network without costly development. Facebook's application development structure and API have also brought a network of developers in to enrich internal content. Gaming companies, lured by the possible player base size, have created successes such as Farmville, drawing upwards of 10 million daily users to the network to play, all the while stemming off possible external competition.

Facebook's external integration brings website content into the site rather seamlessly. This content aggregation is increasingly helped by leveraging Facebook user accounts as a tool to access data on other websites, through which Facebook aims to make the web more socially integrated. Facebook's content ethos has been the antithesis of what occurred with AOL, as the more content that can be easily shared through the network (from general sites, other social networks and competitors), the greater the value of the overall experience. In this way, Facebook avoids 'micro-competition' by being an audience multiplier, not a competitor to media platforms, websites & social networks.

The difference between AOL & Facebook's integration strategies means the way forward is different for the internet's most prominent social network. However, just as AOL faced its largest challenge in broadband and the wider internet, Facebook must reconcile its position relative to upcoming trends in search. Technological shifts in the market towards more efficient search threaten to be the largest challenge to Facebook's 'integrated garden' strategy. The company must move forward to meet both market trends and competitors such as Google, in serving up information based on the organization's strengths. The patent of social graph search Facebook obtained earlier this year is a start, but users expect a functionality in line with the network's current position on the internet. Just as AOL failed to adapt widely and quickly enough to emerging changes, Facebook must keep up the pace of innovation or risk being knocked from ubiquity in the same manner.

Can Social Media Drive Positive Behaviour Change?

Social media marketing commonly uses the medium to leverage the power of our friend networks to drive purchase, get users to engage with a brand/campaign or spread recommendations. While examples of the power to drive behaviour through community engagement are readily available for brands, NGOs, political parties & charities, does the power of social media extend to positive health behaviour for users?

Source:Hastings (2007)

Our decisions about behaviour don't just come from internal factors, but are shaped by a variety of external sources, such as peer reference groups, family and the local community/culture.

In real life networks, the choice to exercise more, give up smoking, eat healthier or save more money can be influenced by those around us. The readiness to share these personal positive initiatives may be tempered by the closeness of the relationships we have with others, but generally, these can be shared experiences across our family, friend, professional or acquaintance networks. Given that the power of social networking is moving these relationships online, regardless of geographic barriers, shouldn't our positive decisions become even more incentivized?

The amount of information online supporting positive behavioural efforts is vast, with sites such as Webmd, blogs on nutrition, Facebook pages for NGOs such as the American Lung association and twitter pages for those ready to provide fitness advice. Going beyond just providing information, and reinforcing activity, seems to limit the amount of sources slightly.

 Foursquare's Healthy Eating Badge encourages healthy dining options...

Location based social networks (LBSN) such as Foursquare provide good examples in the form of their current campaigns with Runkeeper (providing badges to those who run certain amounts) and CNN on healthy eating (providing badges to those who check in at various Farmer's Markets & other locations). Promotions such as these take the search for information and incentivize activity, but what about aiding decisions and committing to them?

This rather quick analysis of phrases on twitter, shows how quickly 750 messages with these certain positive phrases are generated. Confounding tweets selling products aside, we see that most positive phrases are present in various amounts on Twitter.

The way a user shares such decisions, be it to start running or give up smoking, may vary across networks , though organic conversation seems to be the most basic vehicle for such an announcement. Just as telling fiends in person about our decisions is a tacit license to provide encouragement and engage in our efforts, doing so online, hopes to encourage those within our social group. The reach and timeliness of communication through social media is useful, but do users leverage the lasting power of relationships to enhance their health decisions?

Looking at Facebook Applications for positive health choices (Fitness (both eating & running), Smoking, Finances & Sobriety), I found 44 examples of non-quiz based applications for sharing and committing to a positive behaviour

Facebook applications are a strong candidate for sharing and committing to a positive health change, as they automate sharing progress, track data well and hold the capacity to engage friends. Looking at 4 major categories (becoming fit, saving money, quitting smoking and sobriety/substance related issues), there seems to be an indication that many different applications have built small user bases on Facebook.

Overall, the most popular applications found were Cardiotrainer (78,623) & Nike+ Run Tracker (29,786) -- (full list below). Beyond the top few applications though, a heavily fragmented sample exists. On average, each application has 3,685 MAU, but 420 with top 5 applications ignored. Usage of applications seems to mirror the expected social readiness to reveal such a decision to your friends (in both real life and online), with diet & fitness issues trumping the more serious money & substance abuse issues.

Looking at the anecdotal data from both Facebook & Twitter, it seems that both online and offline channels are regulated by similar social norms when it comes to behavioural choices. This isn't too surprising, as the way which we consider online network behaviour has moved closer to the real world in recent years. While social networking may increase the reach of our friend networks, the implications for behavioural choices and announcements frequently reverberate into the real world, meaning that influence on our choices involves both.

Does this mean that social networks don't have a greater capacity to drive positive health choices? Probably not. The issue seems to involve bringing users outside of a current network in around the choice, less than using existing friends to reinforce it. Communities of runners (either in forums, on apps, or just conversing) reinforce running behaviour, more so than non-running friends probably would. The same could possibly be said for dieters or those quitting smoking online, the shared experience between individuals in those sub groups may grant a greater authority on that specific topic.

WeQuit's Facebook app may have motivated some users during its launch on 'No Smoking Day', but its current user base (98 MAU) shows the challenge in using network involvement to drive lasting interaction around positive behaviour in social media.

So what does this mean for companies or app developers hoping to build a community to drive positive behaviour? It points to developing strengths from networking users around a shared interest, using search, collaboration and matchmaking features over the ability to post to existing networks. The power of the news feed or wall post to drive users in may work for social gaming, but it doesn't seem to be there yet in social positive health.


Appendix:

Full list of Positive Health FB applications analyzed:

Application Name	MAU	Category
Cardiotrainer	78,623	Fitness
Nike+ Running Monitor	29,786	Fitness
Map My Run	21,756	Fitness
My Diet	11,636	Fitness
Quit-o-meteR	3967	Smoking
Fit-ify!	3,297	Fitness
Shapelink.com Fitness Log	3,034	Fitness
CalorieStory Food Diary	2,286	Fitness
Healthseeker	1,468	Fitness
Livestrong.com Daily Dares	1,011	Fitness
Change Reaction	785	Fitness
No Smoking!	672	Smoking
Weight Watchers Tracker	470	Fitness
Weight Challenge	465	Fitness
MyMoney	383	Finances
Healthy Lungs	361	Smoking
Calorie Counter	269	Fitness
NHS Healthy Living	239	Fitness
How much money did I save since I've quit smoking?	162	Smoking
Quit Smoking Counter	158	Smoking
Stop Smoking	148	Smoking
Quitclock	144	Smoking
Quit'n'Tell	128	Smoking
QuitTracker	128	Smoking
WeQuit	98	Smoking
Feed the pig.com	81	Finances
Spark Your Life Activity Tracker	69	Fitness
Quit Smoking	69	Smoking
iChallenge Fitness	60	Fitness
Nutrition Data	59	Fitness
Virtual Smoker	58	Smoking
Sobriety Chips!	46	Sobriety
Payoff.com	41	Finances
With a little help from my friends	30	Smoking
Split Bills	24	Finances
Healthy Steps	21	Fitness
Blast n Quit	18	Smoking
Sober Gifts	18	Sobriety
How addicted are you to cigarettes	17	Smoking
Cybercise	15	Fitness
Quitters	15	Smoking
Gimmepleez	11	Finances
Smart Saver	10	Finances
Yousustain	10	Finances

How Consistency gives Insight into Efficient Use of Facebook's 'Like'?

Facebook's 'like' feature has already become a ubiquitous part of almost any social network user's consciousness. The button, which replaced 'become a fan' functionality on Facebook pages and extends externally to websites outside of Facebook, has become one of the de facto ways to express approval for content, as well as sharing it with friends. As the prominence of the 'like' feature extends further into the internet, as seen this week with Mountain Dew's new display advertising, its power as a signaling and sharing function will only continue to grow.

External embeds of the 'like' button have allowed content which exists outside of Facebook to be easily integrated into the network, driving external content into user streams and friends within a user's network outside from Facebook. Facebook has shown that users 'liking' articles are 5.3x more likely to visit URLs in Facebook than average and have 310 friends (2.4x more friends than the normal user). Given the social, highly engaged user that Facebook illustrates liking content, it's interesting to consider how far this affinity extends. Does the 'liking' a brand or page extend past the single action into advocacy or purchase, or does this represent merely a highly streamlined sharing feature?

Does consistency grant our license to engage?

Given a lack of broad reaching hard data, a theoretical answer may come from how powerfully 'cognitive consistency' interacts with the 'liking' experience. Simply put, 'cognitive consistency' describes the harmony between what we think and what we do, the drive for which can affect our behaviour.The drive itself hopes to avoid 'cognitive dissonance' or the imbalance between our beliefs about ourselves and attitudes and our actions. An experiment by Freedman & Fraser (1960) efficiently illustrates the power of the concept:

"A researcher, posing as a volunteer worker, had gone door to door in a residential California neighborhood making a preposterous request of homeowners. The homeowners were asked to allow a public-service billboard to be installed on their front lawns. To get an idea of how the sign would look, they were shown a photograph depicting an attractive house, the view of which was almost completely obscured by a very large, poorly lettered sign reading DRIVE CAREFULLY. Although the request was normally and understandably refused by the great majority (83 percent) of the other residents in the area, this particular group of people reacted quite favorably. A full 76 percent of them offered the use of their front yards.

The prime reason for their startling compliance has to do with something that had happened to them about two weeks earlier: They had made a small commitment to driver safety. A different volunteer worker had come to their doors and asked them to accept and display a little three-inch-square sign that read BE A SAFE DRIVER. It was such a trifling request that nearly all of them had agreed to it. But the effects of that request were enormous. Because they had innocently complied with a trivial safe-driving request a couple of weeks before, these homeowners became remarkably willing to comply with another request that was massive in size."
(Quote from R. Cialdini's 'Influence the Power of Persuation')

 As shown in Freedman & Fraser's experiment, as well as Cialdini's summary, the power of a small thing, the initial request, allowed license for an acceptance of a larger request. The respondents had already agreed to one offer and therefore were motivated to stay consistent through another. Freedman & Fraser also found that the two offers didn't have to be highly related or from the same person to be effective, leading to the conclusion that the action of agreeing may fundamentally change an individual's attitude.

Relating this back to the Facebook 'like' button, we can see where assumptions can be made. Just as a small sign led to acceptance of a larger request, can 'liking' (the smaller action) lead to a larger action (such as engagement, consideration or even purchase)? The study seems to possibly indicate so, but limitations are present. The power of the 'like' button to fundamentally change attitudes hinges on the prominence of the action. The amount of prominence an individual gives the action of 'liking' may impact how effective it was to change an attitude.

The attention paid to a 'like' button varies based on how the it is presented (i.e. externally vs. on a FB page, clearly vs. obscured, supported by media vs. alone). Facebook's data shows that optimizing the position of the like button on a media owner's site increased CTR by 3.5x. Interestingly, data also showed that enabling the like button to display faces of friends who have also liked the content increased CTR by 2-3x over buttons without.

The impact of our friends...

Heider's Balance Theory Model

The impact of visible friends to motivate 'likes' relates back to another interesting theory within 'cognitive consistency', Heider's 'balance theory' (summarized well in this paper by Awa & Nwuche, 2010). Simply put, Heider created a model involving a focal point (the individual - 'P'), another individual or issue ('O') and a final individual, object or issue ('X'). As shown above, relative to the two other points, the focal point may change his views about one object ('X'), based on his view of the other object ('O') and the relationship between the two ('O-X'). By doing so, he achieves a balance in his beliefs (i.e. 'P' feels positively about 'O' and since 'O' likes 'X', 'P' may be influenced to as well).

Modifying this model to external content with a 'like button', we can see how the website ('X'), the user ('P') and the user's collective network ('O') may influence behaviour.While Heider's model is limited to three individual points, if we consider the mass of your Facebook network to be a homogenous individual (which, with apologies to Heider isn't normally the case), then we can see how the social influence of our collective Facebook friends (which we at least casually associate with and therefore probably like on average) helps to encourage an increased motivation towards an attitude shift and therefore a 'like' of content.

Implications

So, given this mass of theory and data, how can the power of consistency be leveraged to increase both 'likes' and possible after like behaviour?

Primarily, we should consider the journey of a 'liking' user very closely in planning content. By making the action of 'liking' as obvious as possible, either through supporting advertising, pre & post 'like' content or even integrating the 'like' into other advertising, we can hopefully increase the prominence in the user's mind that he/she has liked branded content.

 A prominent like should hopefully modify a bit of the user's attitude towards the brand, meaning that further communications and a clear pathway to end objectives could increase brand engagement. For example, 'liking' content on a brand's website should transition the user into a situation where, later on, they can like other external content, branded FB content or a branded FB presence. Leveraging these increased interactions, greater requests for engagement or action can be introduced.

The power of consistency seems to work best against those already warm to the content, but by utilizing the power of friends, as shown in the slightly damaged Heider model, we can utilize the need for consumer's to balance their friend network's affinity towards branded content with their own.

Given these considerations, its worth noting that none of this is a substitute for good messaging, engaging content and a clear communications strategy. But by leveraging consumer consistency, we may be able to enhance the effectiveness of a clearly planned strategy and gain further effectiveness from a ubiquitous Facebook feature.

How Powerful Are Virtual Incentives and Why are They Always Badges?

The introduction of Facebook's new badge for accomplishments system & website like 'Get Glue' (a recommendation engine using badges to encourage sharing) show that incentivizing on-line behavior through virtual badges is on the rise. While 'token economies' are nothing new and virtual incentives have been shaping behaviour for years (recent examples can be found in about any Facebook app), the manifestation of badges as a reward is quite interesting.

In a previous article about the psychology of Foursquare, we noted that Foursquare's badge system works to economize offline activity through online rewards. Check-in at a number of Starbucks and you get a 'Barista' badge, visit 20 pizza parlors and get the 'Piazzolo' badge. Working in concert with other operant rewards (items on Gowalla, titles on sites like Qype/Yelp, rewards/points in virtual games, etc.), these virtual items have some real behavioural change power. However, what are limits of operant behavioural conditioning through virtual badges and more importantly, WHY a badge?

Source: Forge 38

To start considering the choice of badges as popular virtual rewards touches on the heart of what virtual items can be effective. Badges represent a perfect example of efficient signalers as rewards. Badges in the real world, just as in the virtual, are highly visible. They communicate an important quality or accomplishment to others in a succinct yet understandable way. Their public, yet simple nature gains its power by being understood across an audience respected by the wearer. Therefore, one can assume that the effectiveness of a reward badge is measured by how visible the item is to an audience, how communicative it is to the audience about the importance of the act and how much that audience is respected by the wearer. 

Source

Boy scout merit badges are a good example of this. Though I only attended one scouts meeting (an introductory session which caused me to decide that not wearing a uniform and camping sounded much more fun), I and others can understand the system of how members earn badges for accomplishments (such as fishing or first aid) from popular culture.This means that the badges, which are recognizable by a large portion of a population (from either respected group members or secondary cultural members) can easily convey prowess at an activity to a large group from their highly visible position on the member's uniform.

Source: InsideFacebook

Virtual badges on sites such as Foursquare utilize this same mechanic. The badges stay on the user's profile page, where they are instantly visible to a respected audience (other users within the wearer's network) and simply convey the accomplishment of an act.

Through these criteria, the examples of the Facebook badge system & 'Get Glue's' seem to have serious challenges, but for different reasons. The Facebook badge system, which unlocks badges based on various network accomplishments (ranging from having 'x' number of friends to opening 'x' number of groups) will instantly get adoption, due to the large number of Facebook users. The audience, combined with the ability to place it directly on the profile page/news stream, makes the reward highly visible. In addition, the audience that the badges speak to have a minimum of respect with the wearer, as they happen to be the user's peers. However, despite these strengths, most of the listed accomplishments that the badges reward for are rather pedestrian.Where is the respect for getting a moderate number of friends or starting a few groups, when any user could do it relatively easily. In this sense, Facebook faces the challenge of getting users to care about the acts the badges represent, facilitating the items to communicate a respected act easily.

Alternatively, sites like 'Get Glue' face different challenges in implementing effective online badges. The site's badges (or 'stickers' as they are called) revolve around recommending various items to others, an act integral to building the attractiveness of the network. While Facebook's 'like' feature and open graph may quickly render the site's premise obsolete, the challenge amounts are large enough that other users on the network could respect the accomplishment. The badges are highly visible on the user's page, which leads to an ease of signaling about the accomplishment. However, the small size of the site's current audience relative to other related networks (Del.icio.us, Facebook. Mr. Wong, Stumbleupon), diminishes the power of the respected audience. A smaller possible audience to notice a badge requires a fervent/insular user base to maintain the same effect, placing great pressure on the site to attract repeat users and foster frequent activity.

In both examples, as well as other rewards online, the challenge generally falls within one of our three reward criteria. However, even through considering all three factors, user behaviour is highly unpredictable. Only through understanding the overall user experience for a website or network can we attempt to predict behaviour and only then can an effective reward economy be created.