Gamification, social and other cargo cults

I hate the self proclaimed experts in those fields as much as the next guy. But...

I have stopped getting obsessed with it.

If you truly understand these concepts and are able to work with them in a way to provide real value either to your customers or your clients you will still be standing after the dust settles.

It's just a goldrush. Some people find gold most don't.

The thing most people miss about gamification is that most games suck, and likely, so will your new gamified whathaveyou.

Gamification is the new forums.

> Twitter doesn’t have game mechanics

...

> You should totally follow me on Twitter

Yuh-huh. I think Twitter is genuinely useful, but I'm pretty sure scoring Big Numbers is the driving motivation behind plenty of following behavior there.

There's nothing wrong about making your product more fun by introducing gaming elements. Yahoo includes them in their design patterns http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/people/reputatio...

Twitter has no "game" elements? Why do they display the number of your followers to everyone then? Doesn't Facebook show the "likes" of your stories to everyone? Or the number of your friends? What about everyday life, don't we go to school and get grades and distinctions? I even think its a fun concept philosophically, after all, life itself is a game.