OneTrueFan Is The Foursquare For Websites

The Foursquare model of checking into a location, earning badges and tapping into your social network to share that location has become one that has been able to be applied to other platforms. For example, GetGlue allows users to check-in to shows, books, movies and more, earn badges and share this with friends on Twitter and Facebook. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, OneTrueFan is launching a service for web publishers that allows visitors to earn badges for interacting and sharing content on the site.

OneTrueFan, which will be available as a browser add-on or as a javascript code that publishers embed on their site, aims to help engage visitors while they are on a website interacting with content. The startup revolves around a game-format that allows you to see who is reading content in the site, compete for the most engagement and encourages you to share content within the service and on social networks.

As users share more content within OneTrueFan, and on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, they can earn points, and special badges from publishers. You’ll be able to see a leaderboard of users who have been sharing content and can mouse over fellow contributors to see more information about how they’ve been interacting with a site. All of this info can be seen on the bottom of a publisher’s website.

OneTrueFan will eventually launch a dashboard that allows web sites get a multi-dimensional view of their readers based upon frequency of visits, amount of content read, regularity of shares and traffic sent. Web site owners can use existing channels, such as Twitter and Facebook, to communicate with readers.

In the future, OneTrueFan will be releasing an API so that publishers can customize the experience for their visitors. In the end, the aim of OneTrueFan is to help publishers increase engagement amongst everyday users and time spent on their sites. And the company says that their service will help create repeat visits as well and

OneTrueFan is the brainchild of MyBlogLog’s founders Eric Marcoullier and Todd Sampson. MyBlogLog was acquired by Yahoo in 2007. Unsurprisingly, some of OneTrueFan’s interface is similar to MyBlogLog. OneTrueFan has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Dave McClure, Jeff Clavier, David Cohen and Bob Pasker.

Here are the questions from judges Josh Felser, Joe Kraus, Todor Tashev, Robert Scoble, and Don Dodge (paraphrased):

Q: What about the retweet problem? Don’t you reward that?

A: Yes, that’s an interesting game mechanic — because you can abuse this. But that’s risk reward that’s inherit in gaming. And we do block bots — this is just for humans.

Q: There are so many people chasing this — so isn’t survival the strategy here?

A: I think you’re absolutely right. But we’ve been doing this for years. All of the fuck-ups that we’ve made have given us a lead. MyBlogLog failed on many levels — that will help us.

Q: But what about fatigue about game mechanics?

A: Frankly, most sites can get social media right. There’s a big difference between playing Xbox and making the games. The companies that get best practices are going to survive and grow.

Q: What about the Foursquare problem — the mayor problem, you might never catch the mayor?

A: With Foursquare, there is only one way to earn points. With us, you can earn points different ways.

Information provided by CrunchBase


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