Show HN: Beam.gg – Gamifying the online community experience
beam.ggWhen we first started working on Beam.gg, it was clear that online communities are essential to brands in the modern day. As we studied on how to improve the formula of discussion forums, Gamification felt like a natural evolution of it, and the team is very confident that it is the "X factor" of engagement, and our product's strongest point.
I have learned a lot since working on it, and as the designer behind it it's exciting to see how people will interact with our app! Please let me know if you have any feedback, I would love to hear about your experience with Beam.gg!
Always a pleasure working with you!
I'd like to know: what are your biggest challenges when it comes to community management?
As a community manager myself, I personally know that engagement really is a big problem that brands and businesses face when building a new community or growing an existing one. People are often faced with the challenge of making the online experience more compelling or more engaging. No doubt, you've read hundreds of business articles claiming that content is king. And while that may be true, content can also easily be overlooked if you don't have the right engagement strategy.
This is why we at Beam.gg thought of introducing game theory into the picture. In online communities, gamification is used to engage and excite members with playful user experiences that complement rewards systems. You can learn more about how gamification enhances your community’s experience by reading my article here: https://community.beam.gg/post/How-Gamification-Enhances-You...
Some of our best features include: gamification, moderation tools, subforums, full platform customization, community analytics, and community monetization
What other features do you think Beam.gg should have? Excited to hear your suggestions!
As a community management software, Beam.gg provides everything a brand needs to power its online community—from management and moderation tools, to subforums, data analytics, and gamification features. Our platform is entirely cloud-based and hosted, which means brands don't need to worry about upgrading or maintaining software or web servers. We also prioritize a mobile-first design to give users the flexibility to access and manage their community anytime, anywhere.
Architecting and developing a product like Beam has been challenging and fun at the same time. The team is passionate about our goals and is working hard to make all the visions a reality.
As a developer, my experience in building a multi-tenant SaaS community platform like Beam has been incredible. we'd love to hear from everyone about the product and are always open to new ideas to improve.
With all the uncertainty and challenges brought by the pandemic, I truly believe that community is more important now than ever. We rely on those around us for solidarity, support, information, and empathy. And now thanks to technology, we can maintain and grow the bonds of community among us even while we’re physically apart.
So this is a... forum? Something like Forem? I'm not sure what I'm looking at here.
Hey there! It's a community management software where you can build your own white-label community site with built-in gamification features like ranks, quests, badges, and leaderboards.
You can try our product for free here: https://app.beam.gg/sign-up
Before anyone tries to sign-up, the sign-up process is pretty long and it requires payment information up front.
Beam is already a well known brand as the Microsoft acquisition that got renamed to Mixer, and then sold to Facebook, and was the gaming community's favorite Twitch alternative.
Any reason for the name collision?
Our brand is Beam.gg, we are not affiliated with Microsoft's old streaming platform and didn't have it in mind when we created the name. We just thought of something that sounded cool and was easy to understand!
I am not exactly sure what this is, is it similar to Discourse?
Yes. It's a community management software where you can build your own white-label community site. But what makes Beam.gg unique from other community platforms is how it gamifies the online community experience to engage and excite members with playful user interactions. We introduce gaming elements like ranks, quests, badges, and leaderboards to incentivize members, increase engagement, and grow a more active community as a whole.
Interesting. As far as I know discourse also has badges, ranks and leaderboards, but maybe they are not emphasized as much.
Yeah. As community owners ourselves, we know that engagement really is the number one problem when building a community or growing an existing one. This is why we really focused and put all our efforts on gamification. At its core, gaming is about competition — whether that’s against yourself or other people. It’s basically all about leveling up, trying to get a better score, finding the best loot, collecting the most badges, surviving the longest, and others more. Gamers take pride in being the best, and they also find a sense of belonging in games.
The only think to consider is that relevant discussions are still more important than gamification. You want people to post because they have something to say, not to spam nonsense just to get virtual points.This is why upvotes/like work well, they are a gamification feature that forces people to post content valued by others. So make sure that the gamification features improve content, not make it worse.
Yes, I 100% agree. Our features prioritize safety and interactivity. Of course, apart from gamification, we also have moderation tools like word filter, audit logs, member repots, etc. To facilitate better discussions, we have post categories and subforums. Our Quests are also geared towards facilitating conversation and rewarding participation. We have quests like "Get 10 upvotes on your post" or "Comment on 10 posts" or "Create 3 polls" and so on... When members level up, they get access to special profile upgrades and other perks.
We're also currently working on community monetization to allow members to support their community, and owners to generate revenue.