Friday, October 15, 2010

MindBloom Feedback

Have you heard of the new social media game Mindbloom? It helps you to focus your energies on the really important aspects of your life. Unfortunately, it also uses techniques in click the cow Facebook games (watch Seth Godin's TED talk about his Click the Cow game and why it is the trend for many bad Facebook and beyond online games).

Here is my feedback to MindBloom on their new improvements

UnFree dom

I am not overly surprised, but disappointed. I used to have free access to locations and the action summary. Now there is a lock that keeps me out of these previously free services. I am not surprised, because that is the business model of this kind of game. I get that. Disappointed because your company is leveraging people's desire for self improvement through a pay-wall site. You get us hooked and then slowly take away our access to useful tools and then sell us what was originally free. Disappointed. Not really surprised though.

BTW There is a "bug" in your system. I can access the locked out Action Summary function by clicking on the reminder email link. I am sure you will plug this "bug" and I will have to shell out the seeds to get this feature "legitimately". There is another bug that keeps me from ever seeing what the bee is saying. I assume he tells me that you have "improved" the site by removing my access to was previously free.

These days it doesn't take much to piss customers off. There are so many options out there. It is a shame that self improvement needs to cost money and business model is more important that personal improvement.

Mindbloom is a great concept and very well executed. Many people will gain great benefits from using the site. It is just disappointing that they have to be tricked out of their money to make it work.