Hi everyone, So just to stray for a moment from the topic of the Game, I wanted to forward on an update from our fabulous fashion editor, Sarah Jacobson, on Fashion Week 2009: "Fashion week was drama filled but oh so fabulous. in the months leading up to september, i spent time contacting designers and PR folk and asking for invites to the shows. once invites were secured, i compiled a calendar of our events and began setting up interviews and such. during fashion week, i interviewed scarf designer taiana geifer, whose felted wool pieces are to die for. i...
more »beanstockd
Idea Lab is a group blog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age.
Each Idea Lab blogger is a winner of the Knight News Challenge grant to reshape community news.
Learn more about the Knight News Challenge »
Recently, the Beanstockd team experienced (and, of course, celebrated!) our Best Week Ever! In August, we finally surpassed the 100,000 weekly hit mark (specifically 110,566 visits) and on Friday, August 14th we threw a long overdue regional Beanstockd get-together, with staffer from NYC, MA, PA, and DC coming in to join the festivities. We have since leveraged this momentum and are experiencing over 114% quarterly growth, which is extremely exciting. We also have had a few of our staffers move to NYC over the summer so we used the occasion to welcome them to Beanstockd HQ. Cheers!...
more »
Beanstockd Class Field Trip to NC
It's the start of the fall semester at UNC and Beanstockd has just taken a trip down to visit the class, present on Beanstockd, and answer all their questions. Prior to our arrival, the 20 students in the class had already done their preliminary research on us. They were very engaged, asking insightful questions throughout the class, and after our presentation proceeded with a 45-minute Q&A session. In December, at the end of the semester, we will go back for the most exciting part of this course: the final presentations! Each team of 5 will present to us their step-by-step...
more »
Got a new way to talk green? Go digital.
Weekly, the Beanstockd team peruses the online world for websites that share a unique perspective on environmentalism. Weekly, we are consistently surprised with the variety we find. The world of traditional media provides a limited scope on the voice of the green generation - digital broadens that view, significantly.
more »
Public Edition of The Beanstockd Game
With the help of some new summer meat (haha... MBA interns... gotta love them) we have begun storyboarding the public edition of The Beanstockd Game. Our beta edition has received amazing reviews in our beta tests, but for our big launch we are taking the core functionalities of the game and brainstorming new ways to GAMEify the process. We are coming up with some very exciting ideas and in the process of teasing them out. After over a year, we almost forgot how fun the drawing board can be, especially with a few fresh sets of eyes... A big shoutout...
more »
The University of North Carolina's marketing strategy course has elected to use The Beanstockd Game as the case study for their fall 2009 course! The Beanstockd Team will be traveling down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to meet the students, present all the ins and outs of Beanstockd, and answer any questions they have during the course of the semester. At the end of the year, the students will present to Beanstockd their recommendations for a course of action in both marketing and revenue generation for the Beanstockd Game and Beanstockd at large. We are flattered and excited about this...
more »
The entire Beanstockd Team has been running on full throttle with producing the public edition of the Game, rolling out new/better/frequent video content, preparations for serving as the University of North Carolina's marketing course's fall 2009 case study, implementing advertising and other business model/administrative initiatives, and increasing our traffic across the board (which has been off the charts lately!!). In light of this, and with incredibly valuable advice from our Board of Directors (special thanks to Robert Kraft of Fox Music!) we have decided to push back our preparations for a Beanstockd environmental film for the time being. It will...
more »
Beanstockd Class Field Trip to LA
First, lots going on at Beanstockd in past weeks. This Spring, we signed our new video host Chet Cannon, from MTV's Real World Brooklyn! Chet and several members of The Beanstockd Team (minus myself and Sandra, sadly...) trekked out to Los Angeles for 2 major events. First, the Global Green USA Annual Millennium Awards took place, and we were there to cover the action. Beanstockd Classes Up the Global Green Millennium Awards Second, we covered the Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards and asked the attendees how they go green in their lives. Chet Cannon Works the Green Carpet at the...
more »
Online, multiplayer games open the door to a new form of group collaboration that can create value. Take, for example, the Google Image Labeler, originally the brainchild of MacArthur Grant-winner Luis von Ahn. The game pits two players against each other in an image-labeling challenge, as images are displayed on the screen in succession (for example a naval orange, or a pregnant MIA) players enter the name of the image, "naval orange", and every time both players enter the same word they are both awarded points. Players engage for the entertainment value innate to the game, yet little do they...
more »
Other fun stuff Beanstockd is up to..
Each week, we look forward to keeping you apprised of changes, developments, and progress happening with the Beanstockd Game. But, this week, I wanted to amend our weekly report card with some of the fun stuff happening on the media side of Beanstockd! This month, we were able to send several of our writers to the Presidential Inauguration, and even got a special invitation to attend the Green Inaugural Ball in Washington, DC. Our writeup of the event can be found here: Beanstockd Goes to Washington: The Green Inaugural Ball After the inauguration, a few of our team members flew...
more »
2009 is already proving to be a big year for The Beanstockd Project. After a few rounds of successful internal beta tests and user feedback, the Beanstockd team is preparing for our first institution-level test of The Beanstockd Game at the United Nations International School in New York City. Due to the academic calendar and feedback from current users, we will be holding two, 2-week long game cycles at the school for the test. Those two cycles will be broken up by the students' Spring Break, during which we will survey players on how well they are able to keep...
more »
Beanstockd Players Give Feedback on Beta Test
Happy 2009! Here at Beanstockd we're kicking off the new year with a bigger and better Beanstockd Game. 2008 ended with a cliffhanger: We'd just wrapped up our first beta test and were preparing to survey players on their gaming experience.This week the results are in, and we've got answers to questions that will determine the updates we make for version 2. When we started developing the Beanstockd concept, one of the first questions we asked ourselves was: What will incentivize an individual to daily log and track his lifestyle habits? We considered several forms of incentive such as social...
more »
Last week, members of the Beanstockd Team participated in the inaugural Beanstockd internal beta test of the Beanstockd Game. Members of the Beanstockd Team spent one week taking environmental actions and getting credit for it through the Beanstockd interface in order to brainstorm ways to make it better, find any bugs, and compete for a team prize: organic sweets from Manhattan's finest green bakery. After a 5-day, head-to-head battle between Team Apley and Team Wigglesworth (we arbitrarily split into two teams), only one winner could remain. Congrats to Team Wigg! They will be handsomely rewarded at the Beanstockd Holiday party...
more »
Beanstockd Application Internal Beta test
This week we're running a private beta test of the Beanstockd application internally; members of the Beanstockd editorial, business development and tech teams will be competing against each other as they take the game for a test drive.
more »
Tough Economic Times Put New Spin on Beanstockd Game
It's official: the US economy is in recession. The reality of our current economic crisis has hit corporations hard and is now starting to affect the American consumer. Reports on this year's Black Friday show that the annual post-Thanksgiving shopper has a new attitude, one that is cautious about what and how much is bought. According to an article in the New York Times friday&st=cse, "this year there were more shoppers than shopping bags. Even many die-hard Black Friday shoppers -- the ones who camp out on sidewalks overnight to be first through the doors -- said they were cutting...
more »
Happy Thanksgiving! Love, Beanstockd
As Thanksgiving approaches, we wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on the past few months and offer a few words of thanks. This past August, after winning the MTV-Knight Foundation Young Creators Award, appearing in Entrepreneur Magazine, and participating in the summer-long DreamIT Ventures incubator program, Beanstockd relocated to New York City. Since the move to the Big Apple, we brought on 5 new staff members including three interns, a PR Director and an SEO Website Marketing director. These are some of the most hard-working staffers we've ever had, and it's been great having so much fresh energy on...
more »
Market Research for The Beanstockd Game
We're doing a bit of market research to understand how different communities perceive and can benefit from The Beanstockd Game. Because the competition is so community-centric, tailoring the nuances of the game (prizes, length of game cycle, competitors, etc.) to different types of communities is profoundly important. Since we are quite solid on the university demographic, we're asking for your feedback re: the business version of The Beanstockd Game. We wrote up a handful of multiple-choice questions to learn how The Game can benefit companies and individuals in the corporate realm. We're asking if you could help us out by...
more »
Beanstockd Is a We Media Game Changers Award Finalist
We are happy to announce that Beanstockd has been named one of 35 finalists for the We Media Game Changers Award, which recognizes people, projects, ideas and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media. We're honored to share the finalist list with major digital influencers such as Twitter, Digg, Huffington Post and of course the Knight Foundation. We Media defines Game Changers as individuals and projects which "inspire involvement and action through media" and we think that Beanstockd fits the bill. If you agree (or disagree!) we'd love to have your support and feedback; cast your vote...
more »
Recently we've been getting a lot of emails from people seeking advice on applying for the Knight News Challenge. We're excited to see so many of our friends and fans of Beanstockd applying to the contest! Good luck, and for some advice writing the full proposal, be sure to check out this article by Amy Gahran. This week, I wanted to give some insight into our plans for a mobile application and how this feature fits into the game. The mobile app will actually be an integral aspect of the project from a conceptual standpoint. The overall goal of the...
more »
Beanstockd was initially tailored to a very specific population, and as we built out the game and shared the idea with fellow entrepreneurs we received some interesting ideas and feedback that led us to consider other verticals.
more »Featured Comment
It sounds like journalists today also have to be marketers. They have to know who they are trying to reach, and... to pitch their stories to a broader audience.
Topics
Monthly Archives
Get Idea Lab via E-mail
Creative Commons Attribution NC SA 3.0 License