A colleague at work recently pointed me to Newsvine‘s concept of “vineacity.” For them, “vineacity” is a quantifiable measure of your behavior on and relationship to, the Newsvine community.
That behavior boils down to 6 key metrics that get represented as branches on a, you guessed it, vine. These vine icons, concisely denoting varying degrees of accomplishment, serve as reputation badges for the users, making it very easy to get a quick sense of how devoted any user is to the Newsvine community.
The information that they are tracking are the ones that most successful communities rely on: Courtesy, Longevity, Fruitfullness, Connectedness, Random Act of Vineness and Lifetime Achievement. (please see above for what each entails)
I like that the first two “levels” relatively easy to get, the middle two require diligent participation and care and the top two are practically aspirational and will inspire the truly dedicated to keep striving.
I’ve always loved this sort of thing – building a clever system that allows for different classes of users to emerge and rewarding the most dedicated of the bunch. Also, I think the gamer in me has always been a sucker for the visual representation of those classes, which I think Newsvine’s done a great job with.
On another note, while I have a few friends who are passionate about Newsvine, I’ve never been able to get totally jazzed up about the service itself, despite trying to a few times. Perhaps that makes it a good candidate for a future episode of How Do You Use It. (previously featured: FriendFeed)