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.

DESIGN:

version 2 is up, it will get more colour (mandy…) and some more nav in the coming days.

GOT COMMENTS ON THE DESIGN (of kayvaa, I know the blog is tacky) ? LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!

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.

found it – check out my chi.mp profile.

UPDATE:

Rethinking this it seems that the need for a qr code and new cards are actually in the way of the end result, which is to present a lot of contact information that needs to go in a small space. perhaps the best way to think of this is as a protocol, not necessarily a service – with a vanity name or number that will deliver all of the information that was to be presented to the user’s database of choice. if i had a card that had name, number, company url and a digitalcontact id of 5546 – entering 5546 into the website or mobile app would just import all of that information, additional links, and an image of the contact and the card into my preferred dB. So like a vCard: this is just an expanded version. removing the qr code removes technical hurdles (how do i use this?) and physical hurdles (if have to go through another company to get my cards made now) and allows the end user to provide one simple line of text that will connect the card holder to lots of importable and useful information.

Business cards are not going anywhere for a long time. there has been many attempts to try and replace them with digital alternatives such as beaming a vCard from phone to phone. But honestly have you ever had someone offer you a digital business card alternative of any kind and then been able to retrieve or reuse it? Did it feel the same as the exchange of an actual business card? Handing someone your card has always been a very personal gesture – one that solidifies a meeting and possibly  a prospective relationship. It is somewhat an institution in and of it’s own.

Elegantly presenting all of the information that we like to present in this digital age however, is a bit of a task – but since i have seen the introduction and funding of stickyBits has given me the idea of connecting the traditional business card with the rest of our digital identities, using the same sort of technology (qrCode possibly).

Applying a generic sticker to a stack of cards is not only impersonal but a quite a hassle. If one could order new cards with a digital stamp already added that would link the card holder (either via some sort of recognition built into card scanning software, via mobile device with mobile image recognition software, or with a number/shortcode of some sort in case you do not have the ability to use either of the above).

the link would be to a digital representation of the user who presented the card with whatever social connection information they choose to share (even imagine setting preferences for individual users, based on their email address or some other identifying information).  the site itself is an index, but not necessarily an open one – the key to the connection is the card, and you can only browse basic information until the user has presented you with a card. Access to this would allow you to add all of the users contact information (whatever they have chosen to share with you) to whatever info database they keep.

All this seems complex, but there is already scanning software and libraries built for iphone, android and i am sure windows and mac. The cards themselves would be printed by a third party (white label and drop shipping done for me) and the site would start as a simple frontend (photo, links, about me, about my business) with a simple backend to setup these links and information.

There is an argument to be made that several websites already serve this purpose. Facebook, myspace, my personal blog. All of these spaces are places where we open up portions of our lives to our friends and people who know me. Linked in has this possibility but i do not feel that they are taking their position to the fullest and are expecting people to connect with their website and with others on their site.

The key to this would be offering a professional look and feel, and not be cheesy. The brand should be one that is prestigious and that the user should be proud to be affiliated with. Ordering the cards should be as easy as ordering professional quality business cards or sending us a card to recreate with the (insert the brandname here) digital mark added to it. Introductory cards and services should be free just to get users in.

Comments and suggestions always appreciated.

all of these things together define my daily routine and then turn into: why is this situation happening?

now if i had a small app that asked me these questions every day, and i could respond with a yes/no, or a number indicate if the response applied to today or yesterday – i start to gain some quantitative data about how my life is going. why was i having a bad week? well, i had 5 cups of coffee every day and went to sleep after 12 most days. at the end of the week I can assume that I have to cut back on coffee and go to bed earlier – or my week will be bad.

I could keep a diary – but that is another thing to do.

if there was an app that allowed me to set some basic questions – and the app asked me daily, then i am keeping a diary of statistical data without the hassle.

the interface would be simple – question and answer, day that it pertains to (today or yesterday), room for a small note to explain further if needed, and a way to dismiss the question all together: something like ‘i am done tracking this’ which would remove the question from the que.
A review, which should be sent weekly, should look at all of the data i am tracking in a calendar and quantitative view. with that data i could hopefully gain some insight into my habits and make some changes for the positive.

so this would be sort of a daily diary twitter style – not a bunch of thoughts written out that i have to go back an re- read, but conscise data in a graph that shows instances per day and their outcome. simple really – a quantitative overview of my habits and their results.

I want to get to the end of the week/month/year whatever and say (with coffee for instance) – i had an average of 3 cups per day, and i was OK – but in sept i moved to 5 per day and started having bad weeks. the 3rd week of sept i started smoking 6 cigarettes per day, probably because i was having bad weeks due to the extra coffee.

if twitter is a concise insight into my thoughts, then this would be a concise insight into my habits.

The Deets:

the app should naturally start on the web, with an xml output that could be used for mobile and desktop versions.

users could sign up – set their initial questions (public/private) and possible responses, and set their question delivery method and time. (cakePHP)
links to livst.at/nathan would see my public questions and graphs
desktop app in air gathers questions from web api and has ability to display at a set time
mobile versions (android,iphone) should be quickly following
widget to embed on my blog/facebook for a particular question or set of questions
api ()
all answer methods should be aware if the daily set has been answered – i.e. my android phone would not ask me if it checked the db and saw that i already answered (by desktop or email). so i don’t get a bajillion popups all asking me the same thing.
public questions and responses could be autoposted to twitter

how will it make money: ads, silly. then sell to yahoo. Profit!

A single place that I can go to that aggregates all of the updates and feeds of my friends, news outlets – and it should provide an xml that is consumable by others – for a fee.
I would also like to take this a step further and request iphone and android mobile apps that can consume this xml and provide device specific options for notifications based on user defined groups or individual users. For instance – if a message comes through from mom, I can choose that there be a notification instantly cause it is mom. Or I could choose that I get notifications if there are 5 new posts by mom. Or I could get notifications when there are new posts in the ‘people I love’ category, of which I have added mom as a member.
I would also be able to view all of these in one place – so opening the app I could go to see ‘moms’ updates only by clicking the individual tab and selecting mom (perhaps since I check hers so often or if I choose to do so she could be a favorite so she is easily found) or i could click the tab for the category i made called ‘people i love’ and see all of the updates from the sources in that category.

this app should be intelligent as well, duplicates should be removed (in case there is someone like me who has their twitter tied to their facebook status), pics and videos should be fetched, websites that are refrenced should have a thumbnail, rss should be downloaded for offline reading on mobile devices.

this app should be a single source for all updates, and be accessible and consistent on mobile, web, and desktop.

good ex. of the need and the suggested solution:
http://emptyage.honan.net/mth/2010/02/this-buzz-is-killing-me.html

all of these events are sent back to our servers to be aggregated and when an advertiser calls to check on them  – we create the reports and send them on which can take a few hours and some custom made scripts to gather.

What if there was a third party to do this for us though – an independant company that would offer ping, clickthrough, and quartile creation, spitting out a short url tied to each event. The advertiser could enter the details: event title, location in the creative, and other metadata – and once the ping was saved the system would return a shorturl to record the event.

Once all of the events for a campaign were created and saved, the system should provide a comprehensive pdf or spreadsheet with the ad events that may be emailed to the publisher or the creative team to place into the creative.

to solve the need for up to date statistics on a particular campaign the system should, on an hourly or bi hourly interval, gather all of the pings that had been sent back to the system and generate an xml document based on the returned data that all parties can see.

the final leg of this is a desktop air application that would fetch the latest event info and present it in raw and graph format, allowing the advertiser the ability to keep up with how their ad is doing on any given network in almost real time. This application could be custom branded to prvide the publisher with additional marketing in the form of desktop real estate.

the business difficulty here is defining the end consumer: is that the publisher – a service that they would buy to provide their advertisers with greater insight into advertising performance on the publisher’s network and a little marketing? perhaps the advertiser: so they can keep up with the statistics across multiple platforms, or even the creative agency – so that they can provide their advertising customers with the data?

in the end, this seems like a relevant and necessary application, no matter who is charged for it…

is omniture an innovator in this space?
(http://www.omniture.com/en/)

The main thing I would need to consider the purchase of a hugo boss suit is more information. Since this place is a bit haughty, and I am usually in a hurry I never stop in to gather that information, which might be just what I need to buy that suit – or better yet, given the right experience, to become a boss customer for life.

That’s when this thought ran into my head: what if there was a touch sensitive display associated with the window? What if I could ‘click’ the suit jacket by simply touching the window where the jacket was. This of course would bring up a display of pricing sizing and description. And would be so fucking neet that many others would gather behind me to oooh and aaaah at the awesomeness of this window display. This would also be costly to develop, cumbersome to setup, a bitch to keep running and produce a hell of a lot of fingerprints on said window.

Shortly after having this thought I struggled to find a much simpler solution. One that combines elegant futuristic design, but also one that combines the ability for the outside customer to gather their own information and is also easy enough for employees to replace/install easily. This comes as a tall order burt I have recently stumbled upon qr codes.

These are simple and printable little matricies of dots that when decoded by a mobile device with a qr code reader, can provide links to urls, actions for the device to take or simply text for the user to read.

combine these with some window cling-on’s in an elegant design and your window design becomes interactive with the user’s mobile device.

A custom branded application (or one that is ‘theme-able’ and changes based on your location, what store you are in front of/in) to allow the customer to quickly scan and decode the qr code and you have a sophisticated way to deliver data to your patrons. Not to mention a business model.

Pricing, additional details, special deals, others bought, others looked at, refer to a friend, save for later,find the best price, share on facebook, twitter it, whatever. You have all of that functionality in the palm of the users hand, making your window shopper a fan, follower or patron in their own time.

This application hit a bit more of a nerve the other evening when a friend’s boss texted at 1 am about a review that was posted on city search.

Creating an interface to manage consumer/client public reviews would leave the business owner in touch with their public facing social reviews but also allow them to manage those reviews in one place at one time. And still have time to sleep.

This will need to interface with all major places that there is a way to interact with a public brand, starting with facebook, twitter, citysearch, yelp, and smaller ny metro services as it will be launching primarily in the ny metro area.

The user should have a site agnostic way of seeing all reviews since the last login. Since this will be an app where a business owner or brand manager will hand out these tasks to someone else to manage – this should have an overview with listed reviews, who handled them and quick links to the posted responses. The interface should list the review or statement, a place for marking if it was pos, neg or neutral, and a method of response inline.
The interface should have a setting manager to allow a brand manager to setup accounts and choose notification options (email, sms, twitter dm)
An owner should be able to set these defaults and assign new users/brand managers to the account or remove individuals.

Revenue model:
This could go with two possibilities:
free/ ad based edition and a fee/ pro user edition offering direct response capabilities.
Or a subscription only model

One thing he talked with me about was similar bands in differing areas helping one another get a show at a venue that was ***understanding*** of their music. There were lots of venues to be played everywhere for an up and coming band, but getting on the roster was difficult, and it was hard to know whether all your time was going to pay off. Would the right crowd be there for your style, was there a good turnout on the night you got booked for, how are proceeds from the door split, and what was the sound system like (should you bring your own?).

In one method of finding a place to play – bands or their reps would search for ‘tba’ and a location, producing results for venues that had booked the headliner but had not yet found the opening act or the sideshow.

If there were a central location for band members to rate and review gig spaces they had played as well as a method of swapping these locations out for one another, there would be a app opportunity here.

Imagine a site that allowed band members to essesntially become remote managers for one another. Where bands from one area could help bands from another area get gigs at cool places with responsive crowds and on good nights.
Now I am thinking about the systrm here and I am not sure that enforcing a trade system would be best, mainly because I just read an article about craig from craigslist and how he sees things. His philosophy: provide the means of communication and the people who meet there will work out the details amongst themselves.

I am not even sure of the medium of exchange – some may help others for the clout (or the dap as I referred to it in school), others may do it for the return favor and yet others may do it for money. Whatever the chosen medium of exchange I sure as hell don’t want the site to be a hindrance to the ends of helping local bands go on national tours. This brings new talent to a new area and exposes local bands to new fans. This removes the need for high priced managers and representatives – which in my mind is the only reason left for the huge record labels.

In this ecosystem, bands would need profiles and pics and samples (import or link to myspace?), a rating system to rate the remote reps (linked in style of network with recommendations written – had to asked for by the user, should be suggested after a gig date by the system to the band that was booked), and the service/introduction, and a rating system of the venue that also takes genre into account (47 punk bands said boo, 35 pop rock bands gave a standing ovation)

All thoughts appreciated – especially if you rock. Currie, I am lookin at you.