All of my spare writing time has been going to writing a weekly column on technology for The Next Web and an occasional piece for The Next Web Magazine. Some highlights:

• Who runs the world? The age of the female-centric startup
• Behavioral Pricing: A consumer’s worst nightmare, a merchant’s dream
• Social Media: The New American Brain Drain
• The 3 secrets behind the enterprise tech gold rush

Taking vitamins every day? It didn’t work for me. Despite the best of intentions, by the time day three or four rolled around, I had missed my first daily dose of plastic-encased chemicals. And things went downhill rapidly from there. By one week, daily vitamin-taking had become a forgotten ritual.

But then I discovered Gummies!  Yes, delicious, chewable, colorful, translucent-bear-shaped Gummy Vitamins!  Now I wake up every morning anticipating a succulent, chewable treat that kick-starts my day and, by the way, also delivers my daily dose of vitamins.  Somehow, I don’t forget my vitamin-taking any more.

Gummies show how instant, positive reinforcement can alter our behavior. This silly hack gives us insight into how we can build effective routines in both our business and personal life. I call it the the Gummy Vitamin Effect.

Application to Life

Say you want to learn a new language. Each marginal word you learn doesn’t seem to have a huge benefit, it’s only in the future when all the words you’ve learned together that you suddenly become fluent! As a result, most people give up on learning a language because they struggle on the learning curve to fluency. Thus we need to add immediate rewards to the language accumulation step.

Software does this well. For example, in Rosetta Stone learning a small set of words results in a leveling up. This gives you an incentive to keep learning as you are seeing a more immediate reward. Offline, we could hack an immediate reward. One way that works well is to buy a bag of jelly beans (or something small and tasty) and every time you learn a new word, devour a jelly bean.

By bringing instant rewards into your learning, you are more likely to succeed (but maybe not keep off the pounds).

Applications to Work/Management

To be a better leader, we have to make ourselves and our teams more efficient. Understanding the Gummy Vitamin Effect is key to making your team better.

Everyone likes feeling appreciated. Performance reviews are too spread out and decoupled from actual actions. As a manager, you can use the Gummy Vitamin Effect to hack this process. When a team member updates you on progress for a long-term project, give positive feedback immediately. People love to be validated, and like a gummy bear, it’s something that people look forward to. By being focused on giving quick instant feedback, you couple a reward with a step in a long-term direction.

The Taj Hotel in Bombay is known for having employees even more dedicated to customers than the Ritz. Harvard Business Review investigated how the Taj Hotel has such dedicated employees, finding that managers lasered in on ensuring that each staff-guest interaction demonstrated kindness. To accomplish this result, they provided rewards (bonuses, gifts, etc.) to employees within 48 hours of hearing any positive review of an employee. This built a culture of kindness by reinforcing positive behavior. You can apply this same idea in any business through spot bonuses and employee rewards. There have been some recent start-ups, such as Achievers.com, emerging in this space, dedicated to make it easy to reward employees.

The Gummy Vitamin Effect has big implications for how we manage teams, develop good habits, and teach.Try looking at your life and how instant rewards can encourage positive behavior. Oh, and buy some Gummy Vitamins.

Yes. People actually play Cityville. In fact, a lot of people play Cityville.

Zynga’s annualized revenue this year will be over $1 Billion.

CityVille has 55M daily active users. Wait, what?

Zynga is known for meticulously testing every UI decision. By being data-driven, they’ve grow a massive user  base. But it also means that we can assume that their UI represents “best practices” for social applications. Below the fold, I break down what makes Cityville so damn succesfull.

1. Big Obnoxious Landing Page

The landing page is clear, and the call-to-action button is above the fold. Oh, and it’s super-duper-bright-and-colorful.

Takeaway: Make your landing pages obnoxious.

2. Viral Lift/Cross Promotion a.k.a Like!Share!Zynga!Share!

There is a “Like” button on top  throughout the entire game that links to the game’s app page. Additionally, there is cross-promotion to Zynga’s other awkward game, Lighthouse Cove.

On the bottom of the main game screen, there is a bar which encourages you to add your friends to your neighborhood. When you click these buttons, it goes to a  screen where it says this will unlock “new buildings and get more gifts.” An interesting part of this dialog is that it is designed to look much like the actual Facebook UI. It has the same type of blue and  the same button style. This increases trust and makes people annoy their friends more.

Takeaway: People will harass their friends for a fake house…if you make the UI look like an official Facebook dialog.

3. Social Lift via Events

Share the news! Seriously, do it.

Notice how big, green, and obvious the share button is, while how non-obvious the exit button is. The result is that it is very natural to just click through the share button.

Takeaway: Share everything! And make it seem natural to share (by giant green buttons and such)

4. Email, yes email

In the world of the social share, the good ol’ email still is an effective tool for getting users for a Facebook app, apparently.

Takeaway: People will harass their friends via email for virtual houses.

5. Gifts!

Again, notice how the send button looks like the official Facebook UI. I’m assuming this makes people more likely to click through.

Takeaway: Virtual goods + Fake Facebook UI = $1billion.

So that’s it. We’ve deconstructed Cityville and come to what was a probably an obvious conclusion:

• Big, bright, and obnoxious works.
• People will do crazy things when they are mayors of a virtual town.
• If you make your app UI mirror the Facebook UI, people will be tricked into annoying their friends more.
• If you have multiple games, cross-promotion is key.
• Cityville is kind of sketchy.

The 2012 election will hopefully be decided on policy specifics. But that doesn’t excuse many candidates’ lackluster branding. Below the jump is my analysis of each of the 2012 candidates’ logos.

Romney

First thought: Aquafresh Toothpaste

Analysis: Mediocre at best. The font is strange. The graphical logo is supposed to be a patriotic banner in the shape of 3 Rs, but it just looks like what I put on my toothbrush every night.

Grade: C+

Perry

First thought: Jellybean.

Analysis: I’ve always liked jellybeans, as candy… The Perry logo relies too heavily on gradients, giving it an odd glasslike look.

Grade: C

Cain

First thought: Olympics!

Analysis: I like the Cain logo. The torch could potentially be iconic. I woud get rid of the cheesy gradients. But this logo is otherwise strong.

Grade: A-

Bachmann

First thought: The H is wearing a shawl

Analysis: This logo is fine. It’s stereotypical of what a presidential campaign logo should look like. There are stars! Patriotic ribbons! Etc!

Grade: B

Huntsman

First thought: A massage parlor.

Analysis: This logo can be broken up into two mediocre parts. First, the H which is supposed to look iconic, instead looks like a futuristic font on a stencil. Second, the right side with the weird blue watercoloring looks like a massage studio’s sign.

Grade: C-

Paul

First thought: Presidential

Analysis: Ron Paul is a man of big ideas. This year his campaign has been focused on credibility and proving that he is not a fringe candidate. This logo uses a simple color scheme with a strong Serif font that projects professionalism.  I wouldn’t keep the washed out eagle in the background, but otherwise this is great.

Grade: A-

Santorum

First thought: Rick Santorum for Bird Watcher 2012

Analysis: Rick Santorum has surprised me with his strong debate performances, but he’s not surprised me with his weak logo. It puts tons of attention on this random red eagle and not enough attention on his name. Also, the white space to the right of Rick is an odd design choice.

Grade: C

Obama

First thought: This man must have gotten a custom font made.

Analysis: This man did get a custom font. The iconic typography shop H&FJ took their famous sans-serif font Gothic from Obama’s 08 logo and added serifs to it. The new logo looks great, balancing Obama’s hope/changiness with the fact that he is the President of the United States. In addition, the color scheme is refreshing and easy to read.

Grade: A

Hopefully, the 2012 election will be decided on the issues and not branding. But if branding was on the ballot, it’s clear that Obama would be re-elected.

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