November 14, 2008
Obama Facebook Page Reaches Historic Activity Levels
Barack Obama's Facebook Page has unprecedented activity for a leader and will continue to serve as a growing social media monument. Just think about it for a second... will your actions online persist alongside Obama for generations to come? When else in history have you seen millions of people from across the world contribute themselves to a digital movement? If you have comparable examples, please comment!
As of today, the actions of 3,134,949 real people on Obama's Facebook Page are echoed by:
-578,708 Wall Posts
-1,670 Notes (1000+ Comments)
-41 Videos (700+ Comments)
-21 Posted Items (100+ Comments)
-15 Photo Albums (500+ Photos)
Whether people stay active and continue building momentum is up to you. Stay tuned for more examples of Obama's Mass Interpersonal Persuasion (MIP) strategies.
Other interesting Obama social media stats:
-19, 687,519 YouTube Channel Views
-1,500,00+ MyBarackObama Active Users (35,000+ local organizing groups, 200,000+ events)
-927,156 MySpace Friends (147,621 Comments)
-130,522 Twitter Followers (263 Updates)
-1,502 Flickr Photo Sets
*Potential double counting
Posted by Enrique at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2008
World Movement for Democracy
The World Movement for Democracy is a global network of democrats including activists, practitioners, academics, policy makers, and funders, who have come together to cooperate in the promotion of democracy.
The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab will be sharing insights during a workshop entitled, “Using New Technologies for Advancing Democracy,” at the Fifth Assembly in Kiev, Ukraine.
--Enrique Allen
Posted by Enrique at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2007
Persuasion in Games for Third World Development
Over the past few days Free Rice has taken the world by storm. Free Rice is a simple online word identification game with a twist, namely the supporters of the game claim that for every word the player gets right the advertisers on the site donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program for distribution to areas of hunger.
The unlikely twinning of vocabulary practice that improve the English vocabulary skills of people in the Internet enabled world with the donation of food to those in need has been a very effective mobilization tool. In just over a month the grains of rice donated daily rose from 800 on October 7 to 136,236,930 donated yesterday. The persuasive elements that make Free Rice so potent are the simplicity of the message (highlighted by visuals that graphically sow the grains of rice to be donated in a stylized bowl), the ease of use of the site (ie simple multiple choice questions one after another), the transparency of the transaction (you play, you learn, advertisers on site donate, hungry people get rice). Yet above all else I believe the persuasive technique that drives the success of Free Rice is the link of micro action (playing a game) to a macro cause (world hunger) via incremental steps (words for grains of rice).
It is this last link that is the persuasive engine of Village the Game, a casual game currently under development, whose goal is to educate players about the practices of social enterprises working together with local people to improve social and economic conditions in the Third World. Demoed for the PersuasiveTechnology Lab lastweek by Founder, Darian Hickman, Village the Game aspires to be SIM City meets Third World Development. The "grains of rice" in Village the Game are cheap, practical, and eminently usable technologies such as Kick Start Pumps, Mighty Light Solar LEDs, etc., technologies that bring a qualitative leap in te economic conditions of its users. By incrementally playing Village the Game, individuals in the developed world not only become aware of these potent new technologies acting in a third world village setting, but gameplay will also allow them to generate the buzz so as to allow advertisers to get these tools to the villages who can make use of them.
Three Cheers for Persuasion, Games and Third World Development!
Posted by Adam at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2007
College Athlete Recruiters Seek to Persuade via Text Message
College coaches, using a loophole in NCAA regulations, have turned text messaging into a vital tool of the recruiting process. Players have come to expect the messages so much that if a recruiter is not sending them, he's not doing a good job.
The NCAA limits college coaches to one phone call per week to a recruit during his senior season. Text messages, however, are not considered phone calls and are not restricted.
Given the close relationship many high school athletes have to with their cell phones, text messages have, according to a Washington Post article "turned recruiting into a 24-hour-a-day process and have allowed coaches to shower a prospect with unlimited persuasion -- away from the presence of a recruit's parent or high school coach -- right up until signing day."
For the full article including pros and cons of this new recruiting tool, see the Washington Post article
We at the lab would be interested in hearing from coaches or high school athletes about what makes a text message persuasive. Any thoughts would be more than welcome.
--- Adam Tolnay
Posted by Dan at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2007
Embodied agents in China's online panopticon
The AP reports that China's existing surveillance and restriction of Chinese Internet use will be augmented by persuasive (and frighteningly cute) embodied agents designed to remind surfers of the potential of being constantly watched.
The animated police appeared designed to startle Web surfers and remind them that authorities closely monitor Web activity. However, the statement did not say whether there were plans to boost monitoring further.
It is worrisome, but expected, to see the idea of a panopticon -- a prison in which inmates each might be under surveillance at any moment -- continue to be applied in interactive technology designed for controlling citizens.
Bentham's panopticon
In Discipline and Punish, Foucault uses the panopticon as an important element of his genealogy of Western penal systems. At the second Persuasive Technology conference this April, Julie Leth Jespersen, Peter Ohrstrom, Anders Albrechtslund, Jorgen Albretsen, and Per Hasle from Aalborg University presented a paper which addressed the concept of a panopticon in interactive technology.
-- Dean Eckles
Posted by Dean Eckles at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2007
Answers for Italian book on Web 2.0 - BJ Fogg's audio
An Italian colleague writing a book about Web 2.0 asked me to answer some questions so he can include an interview with me in one of his chapters.
He sent me 11 questions. My time was tight, so I didn't practice the answers; I just started recording. The answers I gave are possibly quite boring. But in case you want to torture yourself by listening to me ramble about persuasion and Web 2.0, you can go to the three audio links below.
--BJ Fogg
Audio Answers to Questions 1-4
Audio Answers to Questions 5-9
Audio Answers to Questions 10-11
Posted by BJ Fogg at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2007
Captology to Promote Alternative Transportation
A project called altVerto based out of the University of Michigan is attempting to persuade drivers to use alternative transportation. Users decide to install a plugin that interacts with mapping sites. When users search for a route, the program "displays alternative transportation options along with the associated [financial and environmental] savings. This seems like a perfect example of captology at work and the designers have several nice insights detailed on their site below:
--Rolf Steier
Posted by Rolf at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2007
What is the most powerful persuasive page on your website?
Holding the attention of busy advertising executives at a breakfast meeting is a difficult task, all the more so when the audience believes it knows everything there is to know about the field. And yet Richard Sedley's March 15, 2007 breakfast talk makes clear that he succeeded admirably in informing and entertaining insiders in the field.
In fifteen brief minutes Richard walked the audience through the theories of credibility and decision-making, the history of rhetoric from classical times till the postmodern period, experimental results using computers as persuasive agents, to ethics of persuasion in changing times.
Good enough for insiders, and yet accessible to all, I found Richard's talk to be a great introduction to the field. The podcast of Richard's talk is available on:
http://www.richard-sedley.com/blog/images/Persuasive-Solutions-for-Demanding-Times.mp3
with slides accompanying the talk available on:
http://www.richard-sedley.com/blog/images/cScape_Persuasive-Solutions.pdf
It is not only the impressive breadth and masterful synthesis that made Richard Seldey's talk excellent. It is his facts and anecdotes, marshaled wonderfully to keep all interested. From this talk I learned that the decision of whether to trust a website or not takes 500 milliseconds, re-discovered time (timing is everything!) as a powerful but oft reflected variable to pay attention to, and was surprised to understand that the most potent page in terms of customer conversion is the Thank You page.
Two thumbs up on Richard Sedley's podcast.
Posted by Adam at 09:51 PM | Comments (1)
June 18, 2007
Whew . . . Our busiest months ever
Our blog has been mostly silent, but we've had our busiest few months ever.
After we hosted an event on Mobile Persuasion for 280 people (www.mobilepersuasion.org), we published a book on this topic with 20 authors. (www.mobilepersuasion.com)
Then we hosted an academic conference on persuasive technology for 170 people. (www.persuasivetechnology.org) This was followed by a weekend at my home in wine country for 45 people, mostly from Europe.
Along the way my lab completed two experiments on mobile persuasion and launched some new lab projects. I spoke at a few conferences and companies. And I started planning a new course for fall.
Oh, yes: We also submitted a couple papers for publication and are now running the election for Persuasive 2008 (www.persuasive2008.org)
So you can see we've been busy. And we haven't kept you informed. We'll step back and cover some of what we've done. It has been perhaps the most interesting period in our lab's 10-year history. But we've done a poor job documenting this in blog form.
Posted by BJ Fogg at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2006
"MetroNerd" - a mobile phone app to make nerds cooler
Can a mobile phone application motivate people to be less geeky? Three Finnish students think so. They outlined the concept during a course I taught on mobile persuasion at the University of Oulu.
motivates... 
In eleven slides engineering students Teppo Raisanen, Saana Orjala, and Samuli Ruti describe how MetroNerd can help the "typical male nerd" to "be more popular with the ladies." Specifically, MetroNerd is a mobile quiz game intended to improve the appearance, behavior, and sex appeal of nerds (sign me up!). In theory, the app would motivate users with a vision of greater social acceptance [see storyboard]. As people play the game, they rehearse behaviors and receive instant rewards for hip choices.
The MetroNerd design trio won an award. To motivate the (often shy) Finnish students to take risks, I offered the class a prize for the wackiest project. After the presentations were done and the student votes were counted, MetroNerd came out on top. Their award for wackiness? Three big Snickers bars.
-- BJ Fogg
Posted by BJ Fogg at 08:27 AM | Comments (1)
June 01, 2006
Captology book in Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Korean
An Italian researcher at the recent Persuasive06 event said my book, Persuasive Technology, had just shipped in Italian. This was a (good) surprise to me. I knew the Japanese edition was done, and that there was some interest in Italy. But I didn't know it was a done deal.
So I got in touch with my publisher. Looks like they've also closed deals on the Portuguese and Korean editions. Hmmm. Well, that's good, but somehow it seems they should be keeping me informed on all this.
-- BJ Fogg
Posted by BJ Fogg at 06:50 AM | Comments (0)
May 31, 2006
Persuasive Tech Conference -- good stuff
The recent conference on persuasive technology was a big success. Persuasive06 gathered people from around the world to Eindhoven (the Netherlands) for two days focusing on how technology can motivate good things to happen.
I gave the opening keynote. After that, I had no further responsibilities, so I could focus on meeting people and learning things. Some folks there I knew only via years of emailing. The conference brought us together in person, building relationships and defining a captology community. These connections were the highlight for me.
The most interesting presentation was also the most personal. Australia's Bernadine Atkinson presented a critical review of captology, focusing on frameworks and definitions in my book. I didn't agree with everything she said, of course, but her comments were thought provoking -- a ideal contribution to the event. (You'll find the conference program here.)
I'll likely write more about people I met and what we discussed. But I must say one more thing: Dr. Cees Midden and his team deserve many kudos for a great job creating the first global conference on persuasive technology.
More from this milestone event will go online in the coming weeks.
-- BJ Fogg
Posted by BJ Fogg at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)