The Social Media Club of San Francisco's event, "The Gamification of Social Media," was hosted at PeopleBrowsr's cushy offices in South of Market on Tuesday, April 17, 2012. Pizza and beer welcomed the attendees who came from around the Bay to hear from those that at the forefront of the Gaming Industry. It was a packed panel. Paul Philleo @PhilPaulio is a consultant and events planner who knows the gaming community well, moderated and kept the questions and the conversation flowing. Panelists included Dan Hsu @Danshoehsu, Editor-in-Chief of GamesBeat; Siqi Chen @Blader, Founder of HereLabs; Sue Zana Toh of The Broth; Dimitri Sillam @GrantooOrg, the Co-Founder of Grantoo and Hai Tran, the Creative Director of Tagged.

Much of the conversation centered around what platforms were the focus of these tried and true gamers. It anonymously appears that Facebook still rules when it comes to the Gaming community. As Susan Zana Toh pointed out, Facebook was the first platform for most games to be launched and so that is where the community base exists. She appeared genuinely shocked that people are even using Google+. Other discussions centered around Pinterest and its popularity especially with the female gender and that epic acquisition by Zynga of Draw Something for $180 and change recently. I recently did a review of Draw Something for aNewDomain and I have to admit it was addictive at first but I have moved on since. I wonder how Zynga will retain their users. Retention was another big topic.

Additional conversation was about what is working in the Gaming World. Kickstarter and its use of crowd sourcing is considered a success as it allows entrepreneurs and those willing to take a risk, such as gamers, to connect with their audience and prove its success from its launch on Kickstarter. There was so much conversation that our moderator Paul had to cut off the discussion due to time constraints. The very social group continued to chat until ushered out of the office space.