How Twitter Gamifies Communication

Pre-gamification, the aims of discourse are complex and many. Some of us want to transmit information or to persuade; some of us want friendship. Some of us want to join together  in the pursuit of truth and understanding. Twitter gamifies discourse and, in so doing, offers  us re-engineered goals for our communicative acts. Twitter invit... See more

Unlike conversation in the wild, I can  know exactly how well each tweet did, and I can instantly compare my overall popularity  with that of any other user. This can provide all sorts of pleasures: the thrill of victory, when  we see those numbers tick up; and the sense of long-term achievement, presented in precise  and unques... See more

Twitter gamifies communication by offering immediate, vivid, and quantified evaluations of one’s conversational success. Twitter offers us points for discourse; it scores our communication. And these game-like features are responsible for  much of Twitter’s psychological wallop. Twitter is addictive, in part, because it feels so good  to ... See more