Personalization, game mechanics, and moving beyond social.

Have you seen 750words.com? No? It’s the perfect example of how personal is a different beast entirely from social.

Its idea is simple- help people form a habit of daily writing.  Every day you write 750 words, you get an X in the green box. More days in a row = a bigger streak. Bigger streak = more points each day. Missing a day = breaking the streak.

Silly? Of course. But it’s also effective- by making your success public it encourages you to accomplish your daily writing. After all, when you see a leaderboard of points with your first name and last initial there, you don’t want to break the streak. After each completed day you can see some information about that day- like so:

By showing your name and your picture, it creates a connection that isn’t there with a simple username. It’s personal.

Most website out there are trying to be social. 750words isn’t social. There’s no messaging, no friending, no geolocation or check-ins or photo tagging or anything. It’s you and your writing, but, thanks to Facebook Connect, it feels personal. 750words is almost entirely a personal app- your writing isn’t shared, it’s about private writing. Yet, by tying into Facebook Connect, this personal application feels personalized.

Are social apps great? Of course! But not everything should be social. I don’t want a social Excel, I don’t want a social text editor, I don’t want a social todo program. What I do, want, however, is a personalized Excel, a personalized todo app, and apersonalized text editor.

More personal applications need to be personalized. People love seeing their progress, people love finding out more about themselves, and, more than anything else, people love seeing their name and picture. It’s human! And that’s why this stuff matters- the internet isn’t about technology for technology’s sake, it’s about helping people accomplish things.
There’s room for more apps to be social, but ALL apps can stand to be more personal.