what is kayvaa?
Kayvaa in short is a social high-five, exchanged digitally amongst friends and strangers alike for simply being awesome in one way or another.

Kayvaa is a game that is played by both friends and strangers via the web and mobile networks. The game itself is distributed in that you do not have to come to the site to use it. It should be used in your daily life via mobile and text and on the web. The idea is that in your daily routine or out with friends, you often give each other props, dap, cred, cool points or some variant thereof. Kayvaa is the system that sets rules and keeps the points digitally for this social game that we all play – and allows everyone to play. Kayvaa dap, points, what have you are given to friends that you have made and acquired through the site or it may be given to strangers who have done something that deserves recognition. The underlying principal is to allow people to be recognized for their actions, if the actions benefit the society as a whole.

The game started for me in college, my friends and I would pass out cool points to one another for various daring deeds for young men: talking to hot girls, eating food that everyone agreed was disgusting, coming out of a class with a good grade even though we clearly did not deserve it, knocking out a project, or actually helping someone. While in New York I found there were a lot of people that I would award points to – especially on the subway where you see many small acts of kindness. Men giving their seats to elderly ladies because it’s the polite thing to do, ladies giving their seats to men so they could sit by their wives and children, anyone moving for or helping with a stroller.
These acts all make our society as a whole a kind one. Doing these things is often a reward in itself, receiving a ‘thank you’ is nice, and many times the smile of an onlooking stranger feels good.

But what about other things that you personally feel promotes a good society?

In one instance in particular I saw a guy wearing a shirt that was simply kick ass. Now, shirts themselves do not make a society better. Individuality however, does make a society more colorful and tolerant, and that is what I wanted to award. This is when the problem arose –the complexity of the situation on top of the social norms of the subway simply would not allow me to give this guy the props he deserved. So I decided there needed to be a social medium of exchange that could be easily and unobtrusively given to either friends or strangers.

The system should on a base level do the same thing that a simple compliment should do, tell the other person that you respect them in some way for something that they are doing.

This is a relatively easy technical problem to solve for friends – joining a social network that keeps points and finding friends that you can connect with. And then assign points as needed.

But how do I assign those points to users who I do not know – who may not even be on this service?
How can I assign those points to someone who I know digitally, but not IRL? These are the problems that Kayvaa wishes to solve, and are addressed in the technical and players sections of this document and.

Kayvaa provides a means to socially reward others for awesomeness.

The rules:
for the kayvaa system to be successful, there needs to be a set of rules that the users will be technically bound to.
1.A user can give dap, cool points, whatever, in one, five, ten, twenty, fifty or one hundred increments.
2.A user may only give as much dap in 30 days as he or she has at the beginning of thos 30 days
3.points can be given to friends via kayvaa, twitter username, facebook app, or the kayvaa app on iphone or android.
4.Dap is given to strangers via kayvaa keys: with extra points awarded to the giver and the receiver for moving out of their social confort zone and giving props to someone that they do not know.

How you get points:
dap points may be given for:
anything you think is cool or socially positive
predefined dap categories which carry badges (see modifiers)
initial signup (you must be kind of cool if…)
giving dap to someone else (+1)
pointleader
of friends
of a category
overall
of reaching out to strangers
friending other users
new user because of you

the players:
this system provides some interesting ‘puzzles’ for many players. Here I will outline the types of players – the challenges that each one of them face, and how Kayvaa addresses each one of those players’ issues

I.initial players
the initial players face the largest challenge. These early adopters are crucial to the system as a whole – no only for their playing, but for finding issues and providing feedback, and acting as recruiters for the kayvaa system. It is important that Kayvaa provide these individuals with easy methods fo adoption and point transfers so that the system will grow. To handle this Kayvaa will be able to award points via twitter username and via Kayvaa keys as well as the mobile application.
To award points via twitter username the sender simply tweets @recipient @kayvaa personal note +10 for the reason the dap was given. Kayvaa will then pick up this tweet and assign the points in the database to that twitter username. If the recipient chooses to sign up for a kayvaa account – they will be notified that there are already points for the twitter name that they have entered – and once they link their Kayvaa and twitter accounts together they will be able to claim those points. The Kayvaa twitter monitor will also retweet the award and congratulate the recipient for their award – as well as provide some helpful hint for using the kayvaa system.

For the giving of points irl to people who do not use twitter or who the giver does not know – the user may give a kayvaa keys which are explained more in depth in the kayvaa keys section.

II.friends IRL
friends in real life will be able to exchange kayvaa using the same as above – twitter username and kayvaa keys.

III.friends via Kayvaa
friends who are connected on the kayvaa nework will be able to exchange very easily using either the above methods, or by using their mobile applications where they will simply choose the user they wish to send dap to from their list of friends or via an autocompleting To: form field.

IV.Digital friends
friends who know one another digitally can publish their kayvaa usernames. Other users who wish to send them social dap will be able to go to kayvaa.com/username to see the user’s profile and award the user with social dap there.

V. Strangers
the primary medium for the exchange of social dap in this situation will be the kayvaa key.

modifiers
Kayvaa has several kinds of dap predetermined – kinds of points that we think are base level and necessary for the operation of a decent society. While users can tag the dap that they give with any tag they feel accurately describes the award, tagging dap with these categories will signal kayvaa to give them a badge for the category that the dap was associated with and award extra points (modifiers) for making the system and our society awesome.

These categories are:
environmental
monetary
manners
business
standing up
equality
awareness
mover
kindness
sexy/hot
daring
honesty
bravity
innovation
social intelligence
individuality
technically saavy
spiritual

What kayvaa dap does for the user.
Dap is first and foremost it’s own reward. Since the game is already played in one form or another between friends and colleagues, digitizing it will only make it more enjoyable – giving the players to see in real time how well they are doing and allowing for the publication of the game itself and the results. By offering rewards and incentives amongst friends Kayvaa will only increase the competition. Kayvaa will also tweet out winners daily and at the end of the 30 day spans to keep other users interested and playing.

Secondly, to quote a very intelligent associate of mine – never underestimate the power of numbers on a web page (Jared Klett – blip.tv). People today are always clamoring for more in terms of social networks. Number of friends on facebook, followers on twitter, readers and comments on blogs and tumbalarity on tumblr. Kayvaa will provide a fun and socially rewarding game – but there will have to be more.

Once the service is about a year old there will have to be rewards for users to not only continue playing but competing. This will be the intersection of the kayvaa categories and brands. A brand can sponsor a category for a 30 day span, offering the users awards for the most points nationally. For instance Dell computer could offer up a laptop for the user with the most points in the technology category. Dell would not only receive the exposure for offering the winner a laptop – but each dap given in that category for the duration would be sponsored by dell – offering promotion on all of the social networks that the users have linked to their Kayvaa accounts.

Kayvaa keys.
Kayvaa keys are an integral part of the system – while the system is techniacally simple for people who are members of the kayvaa community and even for those who are not by leveraging other networks such as twitter – the point of the system is to provide a means of propegating awareness and the reward of social awesomeness. This means that all people deserve that reward and the recognition of others regardless of whether or not they are on the Kayvaa network. The kayvaa key is a kechain like medal that can be associated with points to be awarded via an imprinted qr code. Even if the recipient does not know what it is or what it is for – it can be understood very easily by following the instructions on the key.
The sender will scan the code on the key using the kayvaa website or the mobile application and then fill in the details – title, description, tags, points. Location and time will be automatically filled. Then, once the recipient has the key they can find the details that were entered by the sender by visiting the Kayvaa website and entering the key number or scanning the qr code that is printed on the key with their mobile device.

Kayvaa keys can be given and received publicly (with the user’s Kayvaa username associated) or privately (without the username associated). This allows a person to give or accept a compliment without linking to the other user.
This concept is crucial to the users in that it truly links real life with the web. Once Kayvaa users get used to seeing and using qr codes – kayvaa will have paved the way for printable dap – imagine a world where a user can get dap from a brand as the brand will be able to print this code inside their product packaging to reward users for purchases or enter them into product promotions or giveaways. Kayvaa will be the gateway for all of this.
Kayvaa keys will be laser cut and printed on ¾ inch plastic in various colors and potentially sponsored by various brands to offset cost. Users who sign up for the service will be given 10 keys each to start with and will be able to request more by visiting the web site.