Mixx.com is a social network and social news aggregator that you can customize and personalize based on your interests etc. Not too shabby, it hasn’t been a complete standout service and thus has received pretty much zero attention after first signing up for it and trying it out.
But, there’s something interesting to be learned from them (and this might be the only thing); they’ve created a somewhat simple and yet ingenious way of getting people to update their profile, especially their profiles images.
You see, if you don’t update your profile then they have some “canned” copy for who you are as well as some completely random profile pictures that rotate. Most of them are definitely not flattering (many of them are mugshots of celebrities).
Take a look at this video of me refreshing my public profile:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2A9BoeMXJs
Obviously my profile is 100% inaccurate, and that’s compelling enough to get me to update my profile. It’s a powerful play and a large incentive.
Is it strategic though? Sure it is. It’s been proven that more people will stick around and engage with your online property if they’ve committed the time to fill our their profile. It’s an investment for people and they want to make the most of it.
What does this mean for us? It means that we should take note and create valuable incentives for our visitors to engage with our sites and content. I’m not recommending you necessarily take Mixx’s route of doing it but sometimes it’s just as simple as that.
Finally, if you were to add a spiritual undertone, it doesn’t need to be said that we offer a extremely important incentive for people to stick around and dialogue with us. As a result, this is an important strategy to consider.
klreed189 says
This is a great way to get people to update and stay with what is going on. Smart on their part.
Creating incentive makes me think of creating motives for things.
I see this a lot in the blogosphere with people who give away stuff to get more followers on twitter or more traffic to their site. Smart way to bring people in and let them win something for commenting. What bothers me is that the incentive should not come from wanting to win a free ticket to disney world but it should come from good content and challenging questions. The incentive inside blog world is that the post stirred some kind of emotion inside of you and you want to talk about it.
human3rror says
good point. you can use cheap tricks, but that doesn't mean they'll stay.
@adamrshields says
yep.
Graham Brenna says
We're kinda doing this with our roll out of ACS Technologies' database software. We're pretty much forcing our congregation to use it because it is the only way we let the sign up for the events and programs we offer. When there is only one way of doing things… people conform.
It's still entertaining to me to see how many people are struggling with the seemingly simple task of creating a user name and password to log in to our system. It's 2009 people?!?! π
human3rror says
almost 2010… π
Graham Brenna says
Seriously! π
dannyjbixby says
This isn't really on topic….but I'm asking it anyway.
Is there a social news aggregator site or submission site like mixx, digg, or reddit that focuses on submissions about religion in general or Christianity in specific?
Just wondering…I thought there probably should be. I'm a big digg fan…but religious things don't really hit that community well π
dannyjbixby says
true true
It just seems that a community like digg, but made for "serious" religious items: blog posts, vids, sermons, articles, etc, would be a neat index to have.
Do something about this. π
klreed189 says
alltop kind of has something like this: http://christianity.alltop.com/
I think what the Jim (comment ninja) is trying to do is similar to this. Not the same, but could grow into this.
If I had the ability I would do something like this. I just have no clue how to build it. I constantly surf the web all day finding new blogs and keeping up on what is going on. I could manage it, just don't know how to build it.