Amazon Gets Into MMO-Powered Crowdsourcing - GigaOM

I found this really interesting. Amazon, whose tools for surfacing, associating and recommending content (products) fascinate me, is pulling in incentives from the MMOG world to encourage its “experts” community to assist other shoppers.

To me Amazon is way ahead of other players in establishing and developing the kind of socially-mediated marketplace that I envision for the future.

Wagner James Au explains:

With Askville, users who provide helpful answers are given virtual gold as they rise in status (called “levels”) — two metrics familiar to anyone who’s ever played massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft. Questville will take this to its logical conclusion, offering adventures and Quest Coins to helpful Askville users. With a game like WoW, you become more powerful by killing monsters and completing fantastic tasks; with Questville, you’ll get virtual rewards for providing helpful real-world information.

Think about it: how can businesses of the future encourage their communities to “invest all that time, ability and creativity” that goes into gaming into helping people source and buy the things that they truly want and need.

PS: Alice Taylor of Gaming blog Wonderland got the hat tip and had this delightful quote: “We humans are such reward-oriented critters, aren’t we!”

(Via I am so sorry but I forget who tweeted the link .)