Like this: How game elements in social media and collaboration are changing the flow of information

Game systems have been implementing a range of features as part of their design to encourage engagement and interaction from users. With the growth of online social networking services (OSNS), it has been observed through indirectly studying behaviors that users have repurposed features of OSN- such as statistics and user profiles-in a game-like fashion to drive the flow of information. This paper brings to discussion (a) how the utilization of these elements and (b) how the types of elements in relation to the type of OSNS influence the flow of information, and (c) what that potentially means for the future development of OSNS.