Kongregate is a very interesting site, kind of like YouTube for flash based video games. According to TechCrunch, Jim Greer the CEO likens it to xbox live for flash games. It’s got some very innovative features like live chat with other players on the same game page, points for contributing games and giving quality feedback, and they even share ad revenue with developers that upload games to the site.
Over the years flash games have been often been little viral phenomena similar to video so the potential for a site that encourages the aggregation of these games could be huge. All they would need is to get a couple of games like linerider or penguin baseball and they will gain a lot of attention.
One thing that comes to mind as i look at a site like congregate is it’s less social media and more about “social production” or “social enterprise”, essentially they are giving their community the opportunity to be pseudo employees with opportunities for different levels of “value creation” activities. Everyone from a member that plays a game and rates it, to a developer that uploads a full blown game, everyone has a roll and more importantly ways to measure their success.
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It is great of course
youtube’s uniquness was ability to steal content. Youtube were giving a code to publish video on your blog
I think in order to be millions dollar business, kongragete should also create a system to steal flash videos.
Thanks for the post, Karl. I think you picked up on a key point of what we’re trying to do in the “value creation” comment – basically the points for rating, etc helps reward people at all levels for contributing to site, which hopefully will keep them more engaged.
oi