Meta-Point Aggregation System

Here’s your billion dollar startup idea for March 22nd.  Games and incentive systems are growing, Farmville has 33 million users and when they roll out a new feature they can add 2 million new ones in a day.  People like to play games, they’ve been playing games for thousands of years and just like the polishing and honing of the performance/play dynamic into Lost or Dancing With the Stars (note the game/vote aspect there), games are starting to reach the same apex.  Using a system you can ‘game’ to drive consumers/visitors/society towards an end is going to be pervasive and big business.  We’ve already had fits of this, the Monopoly game at McDonalds, the Pepsi Points bottle top games, etc.  It’s all out there and it’s just going to continue to grow.

We’re at a particular point in time right now where there’s a space for someone to grab the market for ur-game point aggregation.  You have all these points in all these different systems (Microsoft Achievements, Farmville points, Playstation Trophies, etc) but if you could somehow aggregate them all and provide a meta-game on top of that, as you grew and your user base developed you could create a point currency, something not encumbered by existing financial rules but a new kind of thing.  Metric wuffie, whatever.

Once you have the mindshare you can open that up as a market, an economic model, let people exchange points at a set rate or trade points into a meta-currency that can be then used like credit card reward points.  Games start to pay to be involved (the credit card model) and promotional campaigns (get 500 points this week in the health and homecare category for a free tube of Colgate toothpaste!) derive revenue from manufacturers.  Players pay with their time and interest.  Your api becomes ubiquitous and pretty soon you’re the Paypal of the wuffie world.