Internet Entrepreneurs Blog

You may have noticed from our previous post about user contribution points & ranking that Review App now supports user avatars. We’re using a system managed by Gravatar.com that allows members to create portable avatars that can be used on sites and software with Gravatar support (like WordPress). The Gravatar tools are really the best we’ve seen for creating and serving avatars and we’re stoked to offer integration through Review App.

If you don’t already have a Gravatar account it’s simple to sign up. Just enter your email address, confirm your account, and upload a hot pic. Your avatar will appear on sites where you use your Gravatar email address to sign up (including Review App sites).

Simple. Like Review App

We just launched a new feature in Review App today that should help motivate members to add more content to your website: User contribution points. Point values are easy to set up and you can change them at any time. Managing similar systems over the years has taught us that listings should generally be worth about 3 points while photos and reviews are worth 2 and 1 points, respectively. Of course those are just guidelines - you can choose to reward contributions based on their relative worth to you!

Once you’ve configured how many points you’d like to reward for various actions you can set up user point levels to make things interesting. Over at Serious Running they’re calling members with no contribution points “couch potatoes” while only those with more than 100 points are “Serious Runners.” Whatever it takes to get your members motivated, right?

With a user point system in place the possibilities for content contests and promotions are endless. In the past we’ve found great success rewarding members who reach a certain level with free t-shirts or stickers but you may want to use this functionality to scout out experts in your field for additional responsibilities.

More cool stuff is coming soon, keep checking back for the latest Review App news!