SCVNGR at SXSW--high-flying, or head in the clouds? | SXSW. AUSTIN, Texas--Hailing the 2010s as "the decade of games," Seth Priebatsch, founder of the Google-backed start-up SCVNGR, brought a bright dose of dreamy enthusiasm to the first official keynote of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival on Saturday afternoon. Plowing through problems from education reform to global warming, and how they could be addressed by applying the principles of games, the skinny Priebatsch showed up for his talk, "The Game Layer on Top of the World," in a bright orange polo shirt with matching sunglasses perched atop his head and spoke with the jerky staccato of a "Speed Racer" character.
He is 22, and his obviously astute entrepreneurial mind seems like it could be at odds with the naivety of youth. "The game layer is brand new. It has not been built," Priebatsch said. His talk focused on or how the factors typically associated with games from Monopoly to Super Mario can improve digital media. At the end, as promised, he touched on global warming. Mobile games for museums: SCVNGR & Hide&Seek. Games on mobile devices are a new way to engage museum visitors. Two companies gave presentations at yesterday’s Museums & Mobile 2011 online conference. One popular type of game is a miniature scavenger hunt, called “location-gaming.” The premise is that players go places (e.g., a restaurant or park), do fast, simple tasks (like typing something into their phone, or uploading a photo of something), and win a reward (the reward can virtual “points,” or something tangible, like a free postcard or sandwich).
Other types of games are more thematic, such as creating playing-card “battles” between characters that appear in art. The leading platform for location-gaming is SCVNGR, which recently reached over 1 million users (people who have used the app on iPhone and Android phones) and has been funded with $15 million from Google and other venture funds. SCVNGR’s business model centers on collecting fees from merchants who want customers to come to their businesses to play and receive rewards.
Why should a brand use SCVNGR, Gowalla vs Foursquare. Chevy to Give Away 27 Cars With Scvngr. Christopher Heine | October 19, 2011 | 0 Comments inShare27 Automaker launches nationwide geo-social campaign. Chevrolet is giving away one car in 27 different cities via a Scvngr-based campaign dubbed the "Chevy Sonic Adventure. " In a contest running through Nov. 20, participants will follow clues from their Scvngr app or cell phones via text message to complete a series of location-based challenges.
The more challenges they meet around their city, the better chance the consumers have to win a free car. Troy, MI-based Agency 720 developed the campaign, which also involves a microsite for each of the 27 markets. The effort is designed to drive brand awareness for the 2012 Chevy Sonic Sedan 2LT car in markets from Providence, RI to Omaha, NE to Portland, OR. Chevrolet, which has shown significant interest in social media marketing over the past year, also ran a Scvngr campaign last spring to promote the Chevy Cruze model.
Scvngr Deals App Expands to NYC, San Francisco. SCVNGR buzz increases 1,035% after unveiling QR code payment system | Buzz Study. The very people who helped launch Oculus are turning out in droves announcing their intentions to drop all support for the company going forward. To them the merger with Facebook completely changes what Oculus stands for and what the company aims to achieve. As a result their passion has been rechanneled into a crusade against the company, and this crusade has generated some insanely comical responses. Check out this post for the top 5 greatest responses. After more than 3,000 unique visits to our Netflix blog post, almost 300,000 social media posts in the last year, 872,000 Google search results, and two Facebook groups seeking to finally get Dragon Ball Z on Netflix, we’ve decided to lead the fight to help make it happen.
This infographic details what Facebook got for their massive $19 billion acqusition of WhatsApp, including $3 billion in stock for employees. Did you see that extremely controversial commercial that Coca Cola ran during the Super Bowl? Alert! Alert!