{"id":19059,"date":"2016-03-01T16:41:08","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T20:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=19059"},"modified":"2016-03-02T15:30:45","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T19:30:45","slug":"google-incentivizes-local-guides-with-gamefication-and-kudos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/01\/google-incentivizes-local-guides-with-gamefication-and-kudos\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Incentivizes Local Guides with Gamification and Kudos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google expanded<\/a>\u00a0the Local Guides program from its initial review focused emphasis and has been encouraging other types of engagements with Google Maps.<\/p>\n

in November\u00a0they started\u00a0giving Local Guide\u00a0points for photos uploaded,\u00a0and \u00a0listings edited. They even\u00a0have offered Regional Lead status in MapMaker to them.<\/p>\n

The program was introduced<\/a> in January of last year and while it is similar to Yelp’s Elite program, I have\u00a0argued<\/a> that it comes with a distinctive Google flavor. Google has managed to engage a very large number of trusted users to actively improve Google Maps and they have done so at very, very low\u00a0costs and huge scale.<\/p>\n

And not only has it been at low cost but it has saved Google time and money finding trusted beta testers and MapMaker editors. They make those seem like benefits to the users. \u00a0I also get 1 terabyte of free storage. I am not sure the incremental cost of that to Google but it has to be very little.<\/p>\n

In addition to writing the occasional review and editing locations, I frequently upload photos to Maps…. I just received this acknowledgement that my photos have been seen 500,000 times.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a>
Click to view larger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PS added 3\/2 Google’s definition of gasification:
\n\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google expanded\u00a0the Local Guides program from its initial review focused emphasis and has been encouraging other types of engagements with Google Maps. in November\u00a0they started\u00a0giving Local Guide\u00a0points for photos uploaded,\u00a0and \u00a0listings edited. They even\u00a0have offered Regional Lead status in MapMaker to them. The program was introduced in January of last year and while it is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-plus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t