We get what we want with Facebook ads

Someone called me from the radio the other day, wanted to ask me some questions about Facebook ads. I recommended her to talk to someone who's working with ad sales, as they proudly will inform her of how detailed and excellent they can work today to reach their target groups. My guess was that the journalist calling was of an opposite opinion. I had just been warned by someone in a discussion group to not fill in any profile informations on Facebook as the entire world will start to look exactly like you.

Ad sales teams consider their work to be a service both to the users and to the company. Free, or almost free, online features require loads of traffic and ads is an obvious source. The higher click rate you get the better optimized ad of course. You obviously don't want to pay for unclicked views. Loads of different versions of ads are tested and over time adjusted to what the audience is responding to - we get what we want. The sad effect of this is (if they senders do it right) that all I will see finally is blond middle aged women, or maybe even worse - very young blonds with fit bodies and no kids, but I will for sure not identify myself with any other skin colors or social classes than my own. Feels somewhat as a step back to the 50s only that everyone will have different normalities.

Letting Facebook normalize your world is not allways appreciated. On the other hand badly targeted ads are frequently mocked with the ironic comment 'Who do Facebook think I am?'.

Musing on Gamification... Motivation... Usability... Fun

John Cook refers to PopCap co-founder Jason Kapalka in GeekWire July 21

Creating a term like gamification does more harm to the business because it actually dilutes down what a game means. And, in his view, a game has one simple goal: to be fun.

On July 24 Peter Friedman suggests 'Maintainable motivation' as a new term for gamification.

The ‘science’ of maintainable motivation extends far beyond games and gamification, because it includes all aspects of persistent engagement, even when the initial intention was ‘single-action’. For instance, a sales message might be a ‘one-off’ opportunity to buy something (for instance, selling your car: ‘perfect condition, one careful owner’) but it might just as easily be sold from a dealership which will want you to only ever buy cars from them for the rest of your life.

My reflections are that
- the term Gamification feels as it is forgeting or denying that much of the knowledge of motivation powers is not deriving from games only but from sciences as pedagogy and psychology. Gamification is all about usability and goals. Previous on this >>

- the goal of gamification is to make something - anything - fun or at least without thresholds for the targetgroup, pretty much the same as a game, pretty much the same as pedagogy.

- the social games don't always have a fun core game (sow and harvest) but the game mechanics make it fun to interact, compare, invite, return, progress and even to pay pushing social or individual triggers.

- there are fun core games that get boring as game mechanics for introduction, virtual economic systems, progress and so on are bad.

- it is sometimes difficult to introduce non gaming or non social media users to the term of gamification, and easier to talk about motivations. But words such as Quests, Missions, Progress and Rewards are not foreign at all.

OMG, I chose a boyfriend in Top Girl

I've tried CrowdStars iPad app Top Girl - same graphics and shopping as in their previous facebook app It Girl, but now with focus on a boyfriend. What a sad story, and yet reckoned to be a huge success. You create your avatar from a few botoxed western Hollywood actress looking features, dress for success to find a boyfriend who will bring you all luck in the form of gifts. In my heart I hope that it is not primarily the game itself, but rather the now classic and well implemented game mechanics that make the girls get started, bring in all their friends and return.

Send your friends gifts on Facebook and maybe they will send you some back - check
Shops not available at this level, work your way up or pay to get there now - check
Return in x hours to attend your relation - check
Share every one of your steps for all your Facebook friends to see - check

But then I guess the message below is one that few girls can resist... (from Facebook Top Girl app)

Cacharel just made me feel old

This is pretty much exactly what I'd like to wear all this summer. This Cacharel collection was one of those you feel directly when you see them that this my look for the summer. I felt a little modern there for a while. It has all the practical styles - the skintones (that didn't work out at all as cheap copies as the nyance requires very high quality textiles to not become seedy), the updated 60's dresses, the florals, the bright colors, the psychadelic prints and the classic and simple cuts that last forever.

Even so Cacharel is closing the cooperation with designer Céderic Charlier after only four seasons and welcomes chinese Ling Lie and Dawei Sun. If it was to return to their traditional brand of romance I would not think too much about it, but I doubt that's the reason and guess they on the contrary are expecting a modernization of the brand. This makes me feel old.

Males are default, females are.... women

Author Max Barry writes so well about Dogs and Smurfs - how children's litterature is supporting the structure where men are default and women are... only women, and how this directs their interests for the future.

Undefined characters are in general considered to be male. Barry is talking about smurfs and animals.

It’s the reason she will grow into a woman who can happily read a novel about men, or watch a movie in which men do all the most interesting things, without feeling like she can’t relate. She will process these stories as being primarily not about males but about human beings. Except it’s not happening the other way.

I think about how I really didn't enjoy either comic books or fighting games until I got me some female leading roles. As a child I loved Bamse, Goliat and TinTin but I soon lost interest as they and all following cartoon peers were male main characters with a female side kick at the most. There appeared som female heroines - first there was Batman... then there was a Batgirl. (Nothing wrong with CatWoman but she is not the main character). First there was the Hulk... then there was the She-Hulk. The same with games.

At the age to appreciate Fantastic Four and X-men where a few amazing chics are presented I had already left the comic strips behind and I found them first when they appeared at the movies and I could find my way back.

I have been told that this is a good thing for girls. “That makes girls more special,” said this person, who I wanted to punch in the face. That’s the problem. Being female should not be special. It should be normal.

...Barry writes

Now I look forward to the upcoming Womanthology, an anthology comic showcasing the works of women in comics, created by over 140 women of all experience levels. It's sad that it's needed, but it's still only in collections like this that extaordinary women has a chance to be the standard.

Ingen nyhet att kvinnor spelar, men rosa spel är ännu ocreddiga

Expressen skriver om 'nyheten' att andelen spelande kvinnor är lika stor som andelen män - men det vet vi väl ändå nu. Stardoll och King.com har i alla fall övertygat mig för länge sen om att jag trodde rätt.

Mattias Snygg tror inte alls på principen med rosa spel.
- Det finnsspelutvecklare som med-vetet riktar sig till kvinnor och unga tjejer som målgrupp och mängder med undersökningar om vad tjejer vill ha att använda sig av, men jag tror att det enda sättet att göra riktigt bra spel på är att göra dem så som man själv vill ha dem. Likheterna är större än skillnaderna när det kommer till vad för storts spelmekanik som tilltalar män och kvinnor.

Det är däremot som alltid trist att se att 'rosa' spel alltid anses vara skit och meningslöst att utveckla alls. Hade jag trott på det hade antagligen Stardoll sett helt annorlunda ut idag.

Både vad gäller de rosa spelen och alla andra spel blir det väldigt viktigt, precis som Mattias Snygg säger - att man ska göra spel som man själv skulle vilja spela - att tjejer fattar att de ska utbilda sig till speldesigners och delta i utvecklingen av spel: Speldesigner verkar fortfarande uppfattas som en helt manligt yrke om man tittar på ansökningarna på högskoleutbildningarna - say what? För mig är det där nyheterna borde fokusera nu.

Ljuvliga Lotta Engberg

Underhållande, charmig, glad, spontan, snygg, rolig och underbar är Lotta. Och bra på att sätta ihop gäster och låtar till en massa glada människor som vill sjunga med. Hon kör Djungelboken på svenska och stjärnonas pappor på scen och alla är med.