Canvas released a shop of sorts to its users yesterday - but not one designed to make money (at least not yet). It’s designed to foster user activity:
The meme-generation activity on Canvas revolves around the posting of image “remixes” and giving stickers to other remixes. Stickers are a form of upvote and decide which posts make it to the front page.
How do you ensure quality content on the front page? Give users a limited ability to upvote. #1 stickers are the heaviest weighted, and users are only given a limited number of #1 stickers to use.
How do you get more #1 stickers? The same way Canvas fosters repeat visits. Users get 3 daily for visiting the site.
How do you make #1 stickers even more valuable? You turn them into currency for other forms of expression. These other expressions no doubt themselves have heavy weightings and carry strong social signals for the front page.
Digg and other crowdsourced curation sites should take note - Canvas is evolving their model.
Canvas is using game mechanics to design the activity of their community and the quality of its posts. People should be watching Canvas. The models they’re exploring can be applied to many other community activities.
