Social amplification platform Plyfe launching on mobile

Users earn points toward rewards for everyday activities, like Tweeting or posting on Facebook

There are certain things we do all day, every day. We Tweet, we post on Facebook, and we play games. What if we could be rewarded simply for doing those simple things? Plyfe, a social amplification platform, partners with brands to do just that. And now it is extending those activities to things we do on mobile as well.

Plyfe is launching a mobile platform, the company announced Thursday, along with the announcement of new partnerships with Haulerdeals, the United Nations Foundation, and DermStore as the first customers to sign onto the platform.

What Plyfe does, in essence, is reward users for everyday digital activity. Brands who sign up for the service reward customers for performing certain tasks, including sharing content with friends, putting a certain hashtag on an Instagram photo, taking part in contests and games, such as answering trivia questions, or watching a video and answering questions. Users are rewarded with tickets that can then be used to win real world prizes.

And the prizes are things that people would actually want. So far they have included a VIP NASCAR experience, meet-and-greets with celebrities such as Lady Gaga, back-stage concert passes to Stevie Wonder, and tickets to MTV’s Video Music Awards.

Brand partners’ games are now available in three forms: on their web sites, on ther Facebook pages as an application, and now on the mobile web. With  Plyfe’s mobile platform launch, games can also be embedded into any brand partners’ smartphone app.

Plyfe co-founder and CMO Jeff Arbour said in an interview with VatorNews that the service will be starting out exclusively on mobile web, and that the platform has been tweaked to incorporate the unique components of mobile.

Not only can users start on one of the platforms and switch to the other, but Plyfe on mobile will include features that capitalize on location and capturing content. For example, Arbour said, a user might be on O’Hare airport in Chicago, where they will see a billboard ad telling them that if they check in at a certain gate they can win a free night’s stay in a hotel. The billboard will include a hotlink to the site. That is something that would only be feasible for a person on the go and the ability to access Plyfe on their mobile device.

The reason that the company has decided to start with a mobile website, instead of an app, is that they wanted to test out what did and did not work before going all in, Arbour said. The company started on web for the same reason: to learn the lessons of what worked before taking it mobile.

That said, Arbour expects an app to be ready by early 2013.

The idea behind Plyfe

Plyfe’s philosophy, says Arbour is “Make consumer’s digital life more social, rewarding and fun.” And the company does this by taking brand loyalty beyond the transaction, which is where it usually starts and stops.

“Most brands are asking the question, ‘what should a mobile website be?’” says Arbour. “They don’t know what to do with users above and beyond the Facebook like.”

What Plyfe does is give brands a mobile web presence that allows them to say thank you to their fans by offering them rewards for staying loyal by sponsoring prizes. The prizes are things that the brands have already typically invested in, so they do not even have to do anything extra to give them to fans.

The focus on brands is also what sets Plyfe apart from others in the gamification space, he said, since many of the other similar services are all about how many times something was clicked on.

So far, Plyfe has 15 to 20 brand partnerships, and the size of the customer varies. While Plyfe started out with smaller brands in the beginning, it has since seen larger brands become interested in launching as well. And with larger brands comes a larger audience, so Arbour expects Plyfe to see an increased growth rate in 2013.

Arbour says that the platform has seen a spike in interest from e-commerce service due to the holiday season.

Plyfe monetizes both through these partnerships, by offering a premium model for larger brands, and from offering is software as a service, said Arbour. There has been a “staggering amount of interest,” in other companies wanting to use Plyfe’s technology.

New York City-based Plyfe was founded in 2011, and has raised $1.75 million in funding from Initial Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Crosscut Ventures, Brad Harrison Ventures, and angel investors, including plyfe Chairman, Zaw Thet.

(Image source: https://blog.plyfe.me/about)