Good notes of a talk by Amy Jo Kim: Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Social Software.

Kim recognizes social game mechanics in the following forms:

1. collections (Flickr lets you collect photos to demonstrate your aesthetic savvy),
2. points (Digg lets you demonstrate insight into what’s going to be popular), and social points given by other players (Flickr’s metric of “interestingness” are points generated by others based on how many people have seen your video, shared it, etc),
3. feedback demonstrating mastery (Guitar Hero, Karaoke Revolution, Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution offer compelling visual and auditory cues),
4. exchanges both implicit (comments on FaceBook) and explicit (MySpace “Add Me as Friend”), and
5. customization (MySpace profiles, avatars in WoW)

Here are the slides:

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