features

We’re taking this winter/spring to improve the data aggregation points for the underlying technology at Fame Game. First and foremost that means increasing the breadth and depth of our news collection. Just a few weeks ago we went from 8 functioning feeds to 42 - from over 17 different publications - as a first and giant leap in the right direction. And yesterday, we started to incorporate these aggregated items into the People Connections section of all our profiles. (see newspaper icons on right, which represent ‘news connections’)

What does this mean you ask? Well firstly it means that we’re increasing the scope of what we consider to be “a connection.” Photos in which two people appear are the obvious first step, but establishing connections between people and organizations based on connections that a curated stable of news organizations make is an entirely different ballgame. It begs so many questions that its not worth confronting all of them here… suffice to say: we’re taking every step to make sure that the inclusion of this type of connection, and others soon to come, remains accountable and appropriate as it informs the Fame Game algorithm.

The common thread between all “connections” here is that they’re established by means of the 3rd party data sources to we collect. While we like to promote interesting and creative individuals/organizations/events - the sources we collect are the ones that determine how things are represented in Fame Game.

Ryan

With all that’s been going on over here at Fame Game, we haven’t had a chance to update this “News” blog. We’ve made some significant improvements across all pages in the site since… July! Wow, it really HAS been quite a while. We wanted to take this time to talk about the new Features, the new look Look/Feel and the changed Membership policy.

Features:

First off, as mentioned in the last post, we’ve added a few new features and functionality for users. Now any registered member of Fame Game can create events and projects to compliment their already existing social record. This also means that you can add yourself to an event that you DID attend, but for which Fame Game has no record (sometimes the photo databases we aggregate don’t collect everyone, and sometimes individuals who atteof cound events don’t end up getting photographed).

The project feature allows you to contribute your own work to Fame Game. Being that Fame Game is a great resource to learn about the most active members of culture  here in New York, we wanted to give all registered members a chance to put up their own projects, apart from the photographs that have been taken of them.

All in all - we want to make sure the players of this game can have the most accountable record online.

Look/Feel:

In case you hadn’t already noticed, we’ve gone ahead and cleaned up and “prettified” most of Fame Game’s interface. We’ve also taken the liberty of making some of the calculations that contribute to the daily ranking and attention score of its players public and visible. Now you can see exactly how you stack up and why - hopefully giving you some insight on how to improve your standing and that of your projects and things you care about.

The prettier face of the profile pages has also separated the Search Box from the rest of the page, giving more room for all the fun projects, events, media mentions and connections of all the players’ profiles.

Membership:

Because the baseline for membership into Fame Game has traditionally been event attendance, we realized we were only tracking part of this culture — which, in our estimation, really wasn’t fair. With the simple redesign we enacted, we’ve opened up the doors to Fame Game. The bouncer (so to speak) is still checking ID’s, but if you can prove you know someone inside, then he’s happy to let you in. You can see the new application by visiting the Fame Game Join Page

Just a few updates on the technical end of Fame Game. Our recent event initiative and a few writeups (as well as our automagical SEO) put the infrastructure of Fame Game into overdrive, and it didn’t quite survive. We’ve learned a few lessons (most notably that you can’t hold a website together with bubble gum and scotch tape) and are proud to say we’re well on our way to adulthood. At this point we’re approaching a critical juncture with the growth of Fame Game and wanted to say thanks for playing along with us at home. Parties and Projects has turned out to be a success, all the new photo content seems to be a big hit, and we’re watching more and more of you have claimed your profiles — accepting the invitation to bring this “fame game” online.

In the coming months we’ll be improving the functionality of Fame Game for members as well as providing a few opportunities for those who feel that they should be accounted for in the Fame Game community (but aren’t) to play along. We’re also revising Fame Game’s ANDY algorithm to be more accountable for other New York media sources, and further weighting the user generated content submissions. Because Fame Game can’t track every New York item, we’re hoping this will make the process a bit more democratic.

Until then!

Ryan

ryan [at] famegame

Now that we’ve got the PLAY blog up and running (please go check it out if you haven’t), we’re repurposing this older blog as a platform for news and updates about Fame Game at large. PLAY is our exploration of this culture, the media that surrounds it, and the underpinnings of Fame in New York… this blog, by contrast, is more about the technology of Fame Game and our growth as a tool, reference point, and cultural map.

As such, we might as well get right to it: Fame Game is getting a ton of traffic and it has slowed the site down us down to a crawl!!! This is a bit like the problem we encountered during the winter, except that we’re finally building out the infrastructure that will allow us to grow much much quicker. We’re constantly working to improve the experience and meet demand, so please bear with us. It will be over soon, I promise.

As always, if you have any questions please write to me at rbrown [at] famegame.

Ryan

Fame Game has seen continued rapid growth in content, users, and traffic over the past few months and with that comes some exciting new changes… Wanted to update you all on a few things going on that we are excited about.

The first, you may have seen, is our new “Movers and Shakers” list, based on our algorithm ANDY. Movers and Shakers is a weekly metric used to showcase those individuals in various industries who are movin’ and shakin’ so to speak (i.e. doing and producing interesting cultural things, attending events, being photographed, being written about in the media, and being searched for by others.) Among those making this weeks list include media mogul Jared Kusher, artist Jeff Koons, Fashionista-turned Candy store owner Dylan Lauren, and supermodel Karolina Kurkova.

Movers and Shakers will update automatically every Monday morning with the previous week’s tally, so make sure to check back. Oh, and please remember: we didn’t make the rules, we’re just keeping score! ANDY (and Movers and Shakers) is based on media mentions, search trends, and event photography - so, you’ve gotta get yourself out there to get on the list!

Next, we’re just weeks away from launching our new blog PLAY. PLAY will be a cultural exploration of sorts, and we are bringing in writers from all over to help contribute. PLAY will feature commentary on interesting events such as this one, a party sponsored by AMEX and hosted by our friends at Envirolution, announcing the launch of their new website (Fame Game friend and photographer Stephanie Hodges was there to capture the event - check out pictures here.)

PLAY will also feature thoughts on fame, media, and the state of luxury branding — insights into the larger themes of Fame Theory — all in an attempt to illuminate the bigger picture and why we seem to care so much about these celebrity-types and things like algorithms, rank, news, data, and attention. (I know you’re all waiting in anticipation.)

Jen

jen [at] famegame

p.s., I’m Jen, the newest full time employee at Fame Game. Hi, hello, nice to meet you. I’m just getting into this blogging thing, so bear with me.

Fame Game has scanned over 10,000 events to create connections between 2,500 organizations and more than 130,000 individual people. At this point, we’ve helped over 1,300 people claim those profiles. Which means that one percent of those profiled have accepted their invitation to play the Fame Game. This is pretty tremendous for us, especially considering that we’re still building out the core functionality of the system (we’re almost done, I swear). It also means that we’ve become a bit of an unavoidable force in the social/nightlife/arts and promotions community here in New York, which is exactly what we’ve been aiming for…

The idea, of course, is to catalogue this community but also to bring greater attention to other cultural endeavors and philanthropic efforts in the city. We’re also working on new ways of helping brands, PR agencies and charities bring attention to their collaborative campaigns.

Let’s keep playing!

Ryan

ryan [at] famegame.com

We promised it a while ago, but we’re now ready to unveil it. We finally got a new homepage. Woot!

Fame Game is a fun and interesting way to see who is doing what and why in New York, but the old homepage didn’t really let anyone see it right up front. This new look should help remedy that. Like most things around here, it is a continual work in progress, so please let us know what you like and what you don’t.

Homepage components:

• Photogaphy Header: Large ’slices’ of some of the more interesting photography on the site
• Featured Profile: Randomly selected profile image
• Featured Parties: Most recent parties added to the system for which Fame Game has media
• Map a Connection: Like “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon” but for New York Social Life. Enter any two names to see how they’re connected through event photography
• Featured Projects: Creative and Philanthropic efforts worth promoting

In the recent months you have attended some interesting parties, and taken some interesting photographs. We wanted to make sure to feature those things prominently. As the content library grows, so does the Fame Game experience. Is that cheesy? Probably, but the growth of Fame Game is a collaborative one. If you’re interested in getting your party up on the Fame Game homepage, by all means drop a line.

Ryan

ryan [at] famegame.com

p.s. HUGE thanks to Gordon Cieplak for his help with this design, and the others to come…

It took some time, but we heard you loud and clear. We’re proud to say that we’re finally rolling out our new image feature here on Fame Game. You can now upload multiple pictures for yourself, others, and organizations. This means a couple of things:

• Enlarged photos get their own pages (like here, here, and here)

• Photos will live in collections or “Galleries” for easy navigation (like here and here)

Being that Fame Game serves as a “who’s who” of New York social life, we saw this as a great chance for everyone to add more pictures to the site to make that a reality. Now you’re not stuck looking at a little thumbnail – you can see these photos as big as they can get! (check out the media examples above, provided by our members and photo partners)

On top of this, we’ve also rolled out a new homepage. We’re still working on it (so bear with us) but this new format does a better job of helping everyone to see new and interesting things going on inside the system. We now show recent and featured profiles as well as the activity in the system – who’s joined, who’s uploading, and who’s connecting to whom.

Though we’ve made some major improvements, we’re still working on bringing the rest of the site up to speed. In the coming weeks we’ll be fixing the bugs and rolling out new Event Pages, so you can keep track of your own and others social progress with the same ease you do the rest of the site. In the meantime, and as always, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Ryan
rbrown [at] famegame.com
feedback [at] famegame.com

We’ve just rolled out two new features today: Social Scene and Tag pages. Tags and social scenes are now hotlinked everywhere you see them on Fame Game.

I especially like the social scene pages, you can see who went to a lot of parties in a certain scene, what organizations hosted parties in that scene, and what news and events are going on. The only downside right now is that the pages load pretty slow (you might feel like your on a modem). We’re working on some new tricks and will hopefully be able to speed up these pages in the next few weeks. Finally, you might notice that the people listings skew towards those with high overall attention, not necessarily in that particular social scene. We’re working on a new algorithm that will give an individual attention rankings in each social scene, hopefully we can get this done within the next month or two and really make these pages accurately portray the scene.

Here are some social scenes to check out:

Fashion
Art
Lifestyle

The tag pages are just an easy way to see all of the people that have been given the same tag. Here are some to check out:

Editor-in-Chief
Model
Hamptons
Heiress

I’m still waiting for someone else to get tagged with Radical. Have fun with these!

Cheers,
Tim
tim [at] famegame.com