Badgeville is convinced that 2012 is going to be a big year for gamification and that the startup can help your company take advantage of all the elements of gaming that make us tick (and click), whether they be leaderboards, badges, leveling up, experience points, or any of that good stuff. That was the motivation behind the company’s launch at Disrupt San Francisco in 2010, where Badgeville won the Audience Choice Award . And there are plenty who agree that gamification (and Badgeville’s vision of what it means to web business and enterprise) will continue to play: Among them, Norwest Venture Partners, El Dorado Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Webb Investment Network, who collectively poured $12 million into the startup in July of last year . (Following a $2.5 million round of seed post-Disrupt in November 2010.) The startup is capitalizing on an outlook that forecasts that gamification will take up an increasingly significant portion of enterprise social initiatives in the coming year, doing so by offering an embeddable gamification platform for websites (and enterprise customers) that focuses on real engagement. Badgeville Co-founder & CEO Kris Duggan set out to build the next generation of analytics through measuring and influencing realtime user behavior and giving them the game mechanics that help them level up. The team built a dynamic game engine , allowing users and marketers to define what types of rewards they want to offer their users for certain types of engagement, and choose and offer virtual rewards, levels and reputation, tangible and advanced rewards through a flexible solution, while educating users on how to best implement those through gamification itself

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Badgeville Proves Gamification Is Here To Stay, As Recyclebank & Others Buy In

Beyonce and Jay-Z have yet to give us a visual glimpse of their newborn girl, Blue Ivy Carter, but on Monday they did dish out some revealing ear candy in which we hear the infant for the first time. A new Jay-Z song — “Glory” (listen below) — features Blue Ivy at the end of the track after the proud poppa raps, “Words can’t describe what I’m feeling for real. Baby, I paint the sky Blue. My greatest creation was you.” Baby Ivy was born sometime on Jan. 7. She is reportedly named after two album titles: Jay-Z’s The Blueprint and Beyonce’s 4 , which is IV in Roman numerals. Jay-Z announced the song Monday via a tweet , which includes a link to the track on his web site Life + Times . What do you think of the song and its lyrics, which reference a miscarriage and other intimate details? How Twitter Reacted to Blue Ivy’s Birth Blue Ivy made a name for herself before she even had a name or was born.

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Beyonce’s Newborn Makes Cameo in Jay-Z’s New Song [LISTEN]

It’s 2012, and the uncorruptible and brilliant technical minds in Congress are back from vacation and once again working to pass two bills that would rewrite ( and most likely ruin ) how our internet works in the name of protecting copyright holders. So here’s another way to tell the world how you feel about the underhandedly titled Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate. Go to a new site called BlackoutSOPA.org , and create a modified profile photo for yourself, that you can easily install on Twitter or download to put on Facebook, Tumblr or any other site you want. Created by Hunter Walk and Gregor Hochmuth , the site offers three profile images to choose from: a simple pitch-black one, which is both easy to create on your own, and a little too subtle for the issue in my opinion; a slightly less conceptual one that just says “Stop SOPA” in place of your photo; or one that lets you easily layer the text “Stop SOPA” beneath your existing profile image. Most of us who have used it so far are choosing this last option. Since all the major SOPA-supporting news networks are busy censoring coverage of the issue in the anti-democratic style you’d expect from them, you should go do this now yourself if you want to get the word out to your online friends. You can also submit other badge designs to the site by emailing your creations to: submissions (at) BlackoutSOPA (dot) org. Also, I’m by no means supporting piracy — in fact, I don’t like people ripping off my articles, either — so go read this nuanced post by Greylock partner John Lilly for a fair-minded critique of both sides.

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As Congress Resumes Discussing SOPA And PIPA, Show Your Opposition With #BlackoutSOPA