social media marketing - alittleb.it srl

MTV Best Of

Project name: MTV OnDemand – Best Of
Category: Web Development, Rich Internet Application
Services: Concept, Graphic Design & Coding, Maintenance & Server Assistance
Client: MTV Italia
Technologies: HTML5, Sass, Jquery, Ruby + Rails, Mysql, Nokogiri
Link: http://ondemand.mtv.it/best-of

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

We have created MTV Best Of: the new section of MTV Ondemand – the MTV’s platform of video on demand (VOD) – where users can watch, vote and share the best brief video-clips, selected and “clipped” by MTV’s Editors from MTV television series and shows.

OBJECTIVES AND OPTIMIZATIONS

The main purpose of the section Best Of is to increase video views’ number, bringing new users to MTV Ondemand and augmenting existing users’ participation rates.

To achieve the objectives, we mixed four main ingredients:

SEO: all the code and the design are optimized for SEO. This is very important to effectively exploit the strong brand awareness and image of MTV Intellectual Properties (like Jersey Shore, Geordie Shore, Awkward, The Valley, etc.); moreover, videoclip selection helps to use high traffic keywords (like “sex”) into tags, descriptions and titles
Gamification: to increase engagement, we added some easy gamification elements. First a basic voting system to allow users to decide the best videoclip inside a chart. Secondly, we created seven “Emotional Dynamic Charts”: users can describe every videoclip by selecting, among seven (Epic Fail; I can’t believe it; Really Trash; Infinite Laughs, I like it, This is awesome – cool, Epic Win), the feeling they think it suggests. Doing that, users create dynamic cross-shows charts, ordered by the number of votes expressed on that particular feeling. Finally, we limit the number of daily votes available to users: create “scarcity” to increase “value” is an important gamification strategy that helps in keeping users more engaged (e.g. if the user owns just one vote, that vote worth more and he will consider carefully how to use it) and the charts more meaningful.
Besides the expected engagement reasons, we used gamification elements to: 1) having more interesting charts, able to represents users tastes and so to gain immediately the attention of new users; 2) incentivize Social Media sharesRead More

MTV Awards 2013: Social Tracker

Project name: Social Tracker
Category: Television Social Tool, Cross Browser Web App
Client: MTV Italia
Technologies: HTML5, CSS3, Ruby on Rails, Sidekiq, Varnish Chace, UberVu API
Primary Target: MTV Awards’ television audience
Main Target Device: Web Browser (IE8+, Chrome, Safari, Firefox)

MTV Italia selected Alittleb.it as partner for developing the digital tools of the first edition of the MTV Awards 2013, the first Social Event by MTV Italia. Alittleb.it was the official technical partner of the event.

For the second step of the project, Alittleb.it designed and developed for MTV Italia an outstanding tool for counting the number of tweets received by 20 artists in real-time.

During all the event’s live coverage, MTV Awards’ host used Social Tracker to monitor the audience interest about the artists that were awarded.

The MTVAwards’ anchor Fantini checks Social Tracker during the television live coverage

Reciprocity Effect in Social Games

The third of the series of posts about the new objectives of game designers: today, game designers have to consider revenue issues and business models since the beginning of their creative processes.

Exploiting the power of “give and receive” social pattern certainly contributes to the strengthening of viral and attractive phenomenon and behaviours.
Reciprocity is a deep-rooted instinct in the human mind and many experts argue that it has played an important role in the development of modern society.
In social contexts, people interact with each other in similar ways: when someone gives a gift to you, you not only feel grateful and almost obliged to return the favour, but also your opinion of that person improves. Following this behavioural pattern is perceived correct; breaking it may cause a sort of confusion in the relationship between people.
In social games, players tend to behave according to this principle. Beyond enjoying the gifts received, doing the same can improve the personal image of the player. So, this creates a circle of strong viral and attractive reciprocity.
To fully exploit this type of dynamics, it is required to make the player’s actions observed – and therefore judged – by the other players. As game designers, it is particularly important to establish a clear sequence of in-game actions, which can create reciprocity expectancy, like “ Send gifts to your friends, and ask them to send one in return”.
Anyway, it is absolutely necessary to calculate very carefully this cycle: the feeling of “obligation” doesn’t always lead to expected results, particularly in long term, when it is perceived as a burden. The reciprocity effect is a double-edged blade with a great potential, but game designers should use it with attention and above all, with the skill to trigger it implicitly within the game.

LUDUM – A Platform to Quickly Develop Flash Social Games

LUDUM

Single engine for both social games and Intranet Social E-learning or Productivity Games

Quicker development process leading to faster time to market

Already used on several successful cases (e.g. games for MTV, Nickelodeon, Astrazeneca)

Statistics and Google Analytics connection

Asynchronous multiplayer gameplay

Allow work-in-progress optimization and scheduled update

Alittleb.it introduces its new flash social game development platform: LUDUM

LUDUM is a flexible technology that allows us to quickly develop customizable social games and advergames.
LUDUM joins the existing Alittleb.it & DarkWave Games’ UnderWAVE: a proprietary framework to develop 2D multiplatform games (for iOS, Android, PC, Mac & Linux).

Avventura da Paura – Social Web Game

Following the big success of Camp Orange’s Social Web Games, Alittleb.it has created the social game “Avventura da Paura” (Scary Adventure – Avventura da Paura’s Social Web Game) for MTV Italy and Nickelodeon. The game is published on nicktv.it portal – http://avventuradapaura.nicktv.it/gioco.html.

Avventura da Paura is a Nickelodeon’s Adventure Broadcast-Game that goes on air on Nickelodeon (the Mtv’s teen channel).

alittleb.it created the game concept, the design and the graphics, and made an hard work on writing the Flash (AS3) and PHP5 code of the Web Game Avventura da Paura.

Avventura da Paura is at most a reskin and upgrade of Camp Orange’s Social Web Games: this was possible because of the flexibility of our Social Game Development Platform (LUDUM).

Alittleb.it has developed the entire website www.avventuradapaura.it, too.Read More

Three social gaming trends for 2011 | Gamasutra: Joost Rietveld’s Blog

Social gaming, both expanding and diversifying the gamer population, has been maturing at rapid pace resulting in heavy consolidation, while at the same time leaving room for innovation. Drawing in part on 2010’s social gaming summit, consultancy activities in the social gaming sector and academic interests, in this article I look at three broad social gaming trends for 2011.

Trend 1. Mobile Social Gaming

’2011 will see the rise of mobile social games, both on Facebook as well as on other platforms such as iOS (Apple), Android Market and HTML5.’

Trend 2. Location Based Social Gaming

‘Backed by location based services, 2011 will see the rise of niche products in which cohesive communities will be served with innovative and meaningful products.’

Trend 3. Social Advergames

When properly executed, advergames are an extremely effective marketing tool. Disney acquired social game developer Playdom in July 2010 with the likely rationale of brand proliferation of Disney’s intellectual property rights through Playdom’s games and reach. McDonalds was one of the first and most visible to actually engage in social advergaming by taking over Farmville for a day in the form of a gigantic in game dynamic advertisement. Whereas Frima has attempted to iterate on the success of Farmville in favor of Mazda by developing Mazda’s DriverVille.
‘As companies have become aware of the strength of social media in 2010, 2011 will see the rise of holistic social advergames.’

The Strategies that led to DarkWave Games and Master of Alchemy | iPader.it

We were interviewed by iPader.it about the strategies that led Alittleb.it to open the DarkWave Games department and to develop Master of Alchemy.

We explained our concentric diversification strategy, how alittleb.it’s skills and experiences can be very useful for game development, why to develop multiplatform production assets, how the created know-how is a competitive advantage in developing game-based marketing instruments (e.g. advergames and social games) and gamification systems for alittleb.it’s clients.

Unfortunately, the interview is available only in Italian…but maybe google translator could help you.

Google Translated Version

Italian Version

La Grande Avventura, Camp Orange’s social web advergame, is a success

La Grande Avventura, the social web (Facebook-connected) game of Nickelodeon’s Camp Orange, conceived and created by alittleb.it, is a success: in its first week, it has accumulated more than 5.000 registered users (23.000 in all), almost 300.000 games and 122.000 challenges.

Moreover, the number of accesses, registrations and games continues to be stable and very high.

…And the adventure goes on: today is being released the new minigame Skate (sponsored by the clothing brand MEK); the next week will be published Deltaplano (an hang-glider game). In September, finally, the game La Grande Avventura (the big adventure) will close the experience created by alittleb.it, MTV and nicktv.it

For other information about the game: http://www.alittleb.it/ria/camp-oranges-social-browser-game/

Camp Orange’s Social Game

Alittleb.it has created the social game “La Grande Avventura” (The Big Adventure / Camp Orange’s Social Web Game) for MTV Italy and Nickelodeon. The game is published on nicktv.it portal.

Camp Orange is a Nickelodeon’s Adventure Game that goes on air on Nickelodeon (the Mtv’s teen channel) -.

alittleb.it created the game concept, the design and the graphics.
Alittleb.it wrote the code of the Web Game Camp Orange too, using its Social Game Development Platform – LUDUM.

Read More