Exclusive: Yahoo! Brickhouse launches BravoNation

Posted Dec 20, 2007

Today, Yahoo! Brickhouse launched BravoNation, the newest release from their San Francisco-based incubator program. Gordon Luk, the leader of the project and my fellow Upcoming founder, graciously offered to give me an exclusive preview of the launch.

BravoNation is an experimental platform for people to send virtual awards and achievements to their friends and family, and a robust set of APIs for developers to build achievements into their own software. It reminds me of a web-native equivalent of XBox Live's achievement system, abstracted to work with any online community.

From its genesis as a Hack Day project to my departure from Yahoo! last month, I was a close observer of this project and I'm thrilled to be the first to write about it publicly. Gordon gave me access to the "Rough Draft" release of the site this morning, and I've included my screenshot-heavy tour below.

Background

Inspired by the gaming panels from SXSW Interactive earlier this year, Gordon wrote a series of blog entries drawing parallels between multiplayer gaming and Web 2.0 communities. In particular, his three-part series on avatars discussed different achievement-like systems in gaming, on the web, and the crossover between them.

At the next Yahoo's internal Hack Day, he developed an early concept called "World of Y!Craft," a set of APIs that would let any Yahoo! property become more game-like. As an example, the Flickr staff could automatically give out a "100 Favorited Photos" or "#1 Most Interesting" trophy when a user reached certain milestones. Or the Flickr community, already very comfortable giving out homemade awards, could design and give out their own trophies.

After presenting World of Y!Craft, Gordon was approached by Yahoo!'s Chief Product Officer Ash Patel, who asked if he'd be interested in pursuing the idea at Brickhouse. Over the next four months, Gordon expanded the scope of the project beyond Yahoo! to a platform designed for the entire web. While still working part-time on Upcoming, he led a team of three (Ernie "Little Yellow Different" Hsiung and Kevin "OK/Cancel" Cheng, and Niki Bobb) to develop the new property.

Those Medaling Kids

For most users, their introduction into the site will likely be an email from a friend, family, or community website inviting them to pick up their "Bravo" -- BravoNation's term for awards. Clicking the link displays a cute envelope, where you can drag out a little personalized card with the Bravo image.

I was surprised that I wasn't forced to create a Yahoo! account to receive my award, instead just identifying me my waxy.org email address. Gordon confirmed that Yahoo! accounts aren't required to receive Bravos or collect them into a Bravo case. Creating or sending new Bravos, however, requires a BravoNation account and Yahoo! ID (currently invitation-only). Here's an example of my BravoNation homepage after receiving a few Bravos, with one in the upper-right waiting to be picked up.

After accepting, Bravos can be viewed, favorited, and commented on by the BravoNation community. One nice touch: when accepting a Bravo, users are prompted to respond with an emoticon which then shows up as a comment on the Bravo page.

All of your Bravos are then collected in your Bravo Case, which can then be removed or rearranged. (Syndication options are still forthcoming, though the team showed me a gorgeous Flash widget that turns your trophies into a browsable photo book.)

Sending Bravos to your friends is drop-dead easy. Either select from several stock illustrations and customize the copy or create your own using a Flash drawing application. BravoNation users get a limited number of "Bravo Bucks" to spend on sending out Bravos, which regenerate throughout the day. (This seems to be mostly an abuse measure.)

The award creator's drawing tools are simple, but includes a real-time group chat where you can hang out with others working on their awards at the same time. The ability to see everyone else's in-progress drawings is coming soon, but not in the draft release.

Spelunking the API

Unlike most startups, BravoNation ships with a mature and complete API, including an interactive "API Spelunker" similar to Flickr's API Explorer to help simulate API calls against the live database.

Unlike BravoNation users, developers can create original Bravos from uploaded images and batch-award them to community members using a comma-separated list in a web form or programmatically via the API. Third-party developers don't need to worry about their own users creating Yahoo IDs.

The BravoNation website is fun, but I think more than anything, I'm interested to see how the API is used. I'm going to keep an eye on the Top Applications page to see how independent communities decide to implement this as an incentive system. It seems like a natural fit for any blog software's commenting systems or discussion forum.

Invites

Want to take a look at BravoNation for yourself? I'll give out invites and a "Beta Whore" award to the first 50 people or so that leave a comment with your email address. (And don't forget to feature f*ck the team after you've tried it.)

84 Comments (Add Yours)

Dec 20, 2007
4:27 PM

David Smith wrote:

I'd like to try this out: incentivising — interesting!

Dec 20, 2007
4:33 PM

glitch wrote:

Love to take a look @ this.

inspiring!

Dec 20, 2007
4:43 PM

glitch wrote:

oops. here's my email addy!

Dec 20, 2007
4:45 PM

Matt wrote:

I'd love to check this out. Looks pretty awesome.

Dec 20, 2007
4:48 PM

Dan Dickinson wrote:

I am so a beta whore! Looks like an interesting site, though - I might be able to work this into a few of my sites.

Dec 20, 2007
4:54 PM

scott regan wrote:

Congrats Gordon! Would love to check out the beta and api

Dec 20, 2007
5:18 PM

Coincidentally, another person named David Smith wrote:

This seems incredibly neat and I have an immense desire to do something cool with it.

Dec 20, 2007
5:33 PM

joshua wrote:

I'd love to take a look, this is something I've wanted to add to my site for ages.

Dec 20, 2007
5:50 PM

Neekoh wrote:

since Ernie didn't invite me, I'd like to get one from you. thanks.

Dec 20, 2007
5:54 PM

Brian Del Vecchio wrote:

Bravonation looks elegant, clean, and I love the design. Fantastic work, Gordon and team!

Dec 20, 2007
5:57 PM

snarkout wrote:

I'm in, Andy.

Dec 20, 2007
5:58 PM

mikelietz wrote:

I'm not sure I completely understand it, but I'm duty bound to join it if invited. Thanks in advance!

Dec 20, 2007
6:05 PM

Charles wrote:

I'd love to check out the beta thanks.

Dec 20, 2007
6:07 PM

Laura Moncur wrote:

I would love an invite if you have any left.

This is awesome and I can't wait to start playing around with it!

Dec 20, 2007
6:08 PM

winnie wrote:

Congrats to the BravoNation team! I would like to take it for a spin! :-)

Dec 20, 2007
6:14 PM

James Grimmelmann wrote:

Fascinating. The overlap between the BravoNation community and the various communities within which one gives out awards is an extremely interesting model.

Dec 20, 2007
6:16 PM

brad wrote:

I am a beta whore! And how!

Dec 20, 2007
6:35 PM

Rod Begbie wrote:

Beta-whore-me-do!

Dec 20, 2007
7:00 PM

basicmagic wrote:

sign me up please for an invite... thanks!

vincent, in buffalo
http://www.basicmagic.net

Dec 20, 2007
7:22 PM

Christine D. wrote:

I'd like an invite!

Dec 20, 2007
7:26 PM

Jon Bell wrote:

Hit me!

This same mind-set was my rationale for doing http://www.baresquare.com a few years ago. First twitter, now bravo is going to make my site look like another me-too app :)

The design looks stunning.

Dec 20, 2007
7:42 PM

nowak wrote:

I make a hobby of signing up for web applications that I'd never use... but this one seems kinda fun, so make a whore out of me.

Dec 20, 2007
8:05 PM

Scott wrote:

I'm a total beta whore and feel better about myself each time I try out a service, even if it requires friends I don't have time to cultivate. Please me please me.

Dec 20, 2007
8:07 PM

Joe Lazarus wrote:

Heard about this before I left Yahoo! in November. I'd love to take it for a spin. Invite please!

Dec 20, 2007
8:12 PM

Vince K wrote:

Invite me!

Dec 20, 2007
8:28 PM

Shawn wrote:

Looks like a lot of fun!!

Dec 20, 2007
8:32 PM

Yanik Magnan wrote:

I'm interested in becoming a beta whore as well.

Dec 20, 2007
8:32 PM

Mihir wrote:

I like Xbox Live Achievements but I am not sure how this would work outside the video game format. It kind of looks like the Facebook "Super Gift" app.

Dec 20, 2007
8:37 PM

Jesse wrote:

Yes, please!

Dec 20, 2007
8:50 PM

Josh wrote:

Sign me up!

Dec 20, 2007
9:02 PM

Jason Rhyley wrote:

I am a *total* beta whore. Sign me up!

Dec 20, 2007
9:25 PM

hunter walk wrote:

must. try. new. things.

Dec 20, 2007
9:42 PM

sudhir wrote:

sign me up! please

Dec 20, 2007
10:04 PM

Andrew Chen wrote:

sounds awesome! I definitely want to try it ;-) Sign me up.

Dec 20, 2007
10:07 PM

Myles wrote:

Yay, 2 of my awards made the screenshots! There should be a Bravo for that.

Bravo is a surprising amount of fun. I have a tendency to make birthday cards, etc, by hand with paper and markers and pretend that my 2-year-old made them. This let's me do the same for my friends, for any occasion, online.

Dec 20, 2007
11:16 PM

Elena wrote:

Sounds great. Would you please send me an invite?

Dec 20, 2007
11:49 PM

Marcus wrote:

Sounds cool, although I'll probably end up sending out "anti-achievements". Will give it a whirl if I get a beta invite!

Dec 21, 2007
2:13 AM

Graeme Shaw wrote:

Would love an invite to this, although I suspect I may have missed the first 50 now. Would be really interested in having a go at putting together an IPB plug in so I could use this with my F1 forum.

Dec 21, 2007
2:18 AM

D wrote:

I can't count, is that 50 yet?

Hope not.

Dec 21, 2007
3:05 AM

chase wrote:

I'd like an invite, please. Thanks!

Dec 21, 2007
3:21 AM

James Pitts wrote:

I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a long time. There are a lot of cool ideas here - I can see this being very useful for smaller operators of social apps.

I'd like an invite to check it out. Thanks!

Dec 21, 2007
3:56 AM

Yaffa wrote:

I'd like an invite, thanks!

Dec 21, 2007
5:13 AM

Javan wrote:

Looks interesting. I'd like to check it out.

Dec 21, 2007
6:08 AM

Coral wrote:

hook it up! please :-)

Dec 21, 2007
7:01 AM

Carlo Zottmann wrote:

I'd like an invite if possible. Many thanks in advance!

Dec 21, 2007
7:51 AM

almostinfamous wrote:

me too me too!!

i'd love to hand out awards for our subversive cookie bake-off. (not related to general mills.)

Dec 21, 2007
7:59 AM

bishless wrote:

ooh! ooh!

Dec 21, 2007
8:11 AM

Jeff wrote:

Hope Y! keeps up the innovation. Used them from the early years until GMail came online and haven't been back much. Now, they just need to innovate Y!Mail (reduce the annoying ads, for one).

Dec 21, 2007
9:04 AM

Valette wrote:

I'd love an invite!

Dec 21, 2007
9:40 AM

Phil wrote:

I wanna feature fuck. Why is everyone holding me back?

Dec 21, 2007
9:54 AM

kafkaesque wrote:

Sounds interesting. I'd like to try it.

Dec 21, 2007
10:05 AM

Philipp Lenssen wrote:

Looks interesting.

Dec 21, 2007
11:01 AM

l.m.orchard wrote:

Am I too late for #50? I can't count, unfortunately.

At any rate, it's good to see waxy.org waking up :)

Dec 21, 2007
11:04 AM

Wendy wrote:

Feature f*ck. Heh.

Dec 21, 2007
12:02 PM

robert wrote:

any invites left?

Dec 21, 2007
12:06 PM

Andy Baio wrote:

Invites are gone! Thanks to everyone who commented. If you commented but didn't get yours yet, check your email a little later today.

Dec 21, 2007
12:08 PM

Kelly Abbott wrote:

Yes, I'm a whore. And I play one on TV.

Dec 21, 2007
1:49 PM

thandi wrote:

awww.. just missed it.

Dec 21, 2007
5:39 PM

almostinfamous wrote:

Thanks a lot, Andy!!

this came just at the right time :)

Dec 21, 2007
10:54 PM

Daniel Raffel wrote:

Looks great! Big congrats to Gordon and the rest of the team who built Bravo!

Dec 22, 2007
8:59 PM

Gordon wrote:

Thanks Andy, for the great post, and thanks everyone, for the comments. I'm glad to hear so many people stoked about it, and i'm really happy to see all the Bravoteers messing around and having fun. :)

Dec 23, 2007
2:16 PM

Adam Hirsch wrote:

If you happen to get any more invites, I'd be more than happy to get one! ;)

Happy Holidays!

Dec 23, 2007
3:28 PM

Sprig wrote:

I'd be up for an invite.

Dec 24, 2007
8:13 AM

JiBe wrote:

Too bad I missed it. This looks great! I see lots of folks using it - from developers to folks "efling" everone at the holidays. Well done. :)

Dec 24, 2007
5:54 PM

iPhonehellas wrote:

I would love to test the new platform and send all my friends abroad a Bravo!!!

Dec 26, 2007
8:38 AM

Joe W. wrote:

Any left? I'd like an invite.

Dec 26, 2007
8:07 PM

david wrote:

would be great to try this and other cool stuff you might have lying around. :)

Dec 27, 2007
9:38 PM

crispy wrote:

oh. I want too play too. Please.

Dec 28, 2007
5:34 PM

Andy Baio wrote:

Update: I'll be getting some more invites soon, so everyone that's commented so far is guaranteed an invite.

Dec 28, 2007
8:50 PM

Joe Crawford wrote:

Looks like a cool idea. If you do a second round of beta invites, I'm interested! Sorry I'm late to the party.

Also, Happy Holidays!

Dec 28, 2007
11:14 PM

Doug wrote:

Looking forward to this service. I would greatly appreciate an invite! Happy New Year to all and hope for a resurgent Yahoo in '08!

Dec 29, 2007
11:41 AM

Allyson Kapin wrote:

I love this idea. And you did an excellent write-up. Thanks for sharing it. :) Any chance I can still swing an invite?

Dec 29, 2007
10:09 PM

listen_to_blogs wrote:

So finally yahoo gets into the virtual goods bandwagon. Traditionally its been the territory of MMOGs.

Jan 2, 2008
8:59 AM

Trevor wrote:

Very cool! I can see this being hugely popular with social networks. Oh, and I'd like beta access ;)

Jan 2, 2008
2:05 PM

Andrew wrote:

I'd like to be a beta whore too! If you have any more invites, please... :)

Jan 3, 2008
2:46 PM

Michael wrote:

Sounds interesting, but I'm not convinced it will be as popular as the hype I just read suggests. If everyone can create their own "bravo" what's to stop someone from copying someone else’s award, passing it out at random and thus deface any value associated with having earned "the real" one? Guess I'd have to try it to see how this is any better then the other "web award" self proclamation badges which are duped, and proliferated rampantly across the internet.

Jan 3, 2008
5:24 PM

Andy Baio wrote:

Okay, I sent out invites to everybody else who asked so far!

Jan 4, 2008
10:18 AM

Wii Got Game wrote:

This sounds pretty cool. This almost sounds like the webkinz craze.

Hook me up with an invite.

Jan 5, 2008
5:38 PM

Hillary Short wrote:

The look is some sort of an icq client done in HTML.
I lke the great service anyway.

Jan 9, 2008
1:53 PM

Process Geek wrote:

In the event that your invites are not yet spent, tag me. I wanna be a BravoNation Geek.

Jan 10, 2008
6:14 AM

Terry wrote:

I want my kids to think I'm cool...please help...and invite me. Take care-

Mar 12, 2008
6:45 PM

dorid wrote:

I'd like an invite... I'd like to check this out.

Mar 12, 2008
6:47 PM

dorid wrote:

oops, might have been nice if you got my url at 360!

Mar 19, 2008
12:40 PM

Adam Robertson wrote:

Please send an invite.

Waxy Links

July 18, 2008

The Quirkbook — Rands polls Twitter for everyone's odd quirks and mildly OCD mannerisms

Jane McGonigal on Werewolf at Foo Camp 2008 — ideal strategies, a sneaky all-villager variation, and the impact of the werewolf metaphor

Google interviews the creators of WarGames — great trivia about the making of the film and its impact on tech culture

July 17, 2008

Logan Aube's Hockey Night theme — Something Awful goons tweak an online contest with funny results (via)

July 16, 2008

Sean Tevis is running for Kansas State Representative, XKCD-style — help a computer geek defeat the incumbent, a hard-right, anti-privacy Creationist; he's trying to get 3,000 to donate $9 each

How to Fake Being a Wine Snob — there might be supertasters out there, but most people are just faking it

The Economist responds to Freakonomics co-author's pasty/pastry mixup — tasty response to this original post (via)

Mike Arrington interviews Evan Williams at Foo Camp — great interview; thoughtful questions and brimming with information, without the sensationalism

Rick Trooper — The Empire rolls you.

Mocha VNC Lite, free VNC client for the iPhone — link opens in iTunes; like others, I'm hoping an SSH client is next

Annalee Newitz on Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog — exceeds the hype; the site's been down all day, so I just bought the season in iTunes for $3.99

July 15, 2008

The Sound of Young America Live interviews Ze Frank — strange interview, but talks about the end of The Show and current projects; see also: Jay Smooth from Ill Doctrine (via)

Defender of the favicon — staggering hack puts a playable Defender clone in your browser's 16x16 favicon; Firefox and Opera only

Twitter officially acquires Summize — search.twitter.com is now live

July 14, 2008

Deep Note, the Guitar Hero bot — it got 820k points and 98% playing Through the Fire and Flames; amazingly, some humans can still beat it, for now (via)

Unofficial RSS feed of newly-added App Store applications — until Apple adds their own, I've been keeping tabs using this

Daily Mail tries to unmask Banksy's secret identity — unconfirmed, but definitely seems likely

Trailer for August, indie drama about the dot-com bubble — the fictional dot-com is called Land Shark, but they never explain what they do (via)

Lee Byron maps walkability in San Francisco — built using Walkscore, Google Maps, and Processing

Radiohead releases dataset for House of Cards video — 370MB of CSV point data, Processing code, and a 3D viewer of Thom Yorke's face (via)

July 11, 2008

Preview video of Last.fm's iPhone app — no scrobbling from your iPod, but an outstanding streaming player (via)

Wall-E Down to Earth — fan film takes a Wall-E toy on a tour of real life

Ask the Pilot covers his recent experiences with the TSA — they wouldn't allow a pilot to carry a butter knife used for in-flight meals

Techcrunch runs the numbers on App Store's first day pre-sales — sadly, Apple removed the download counts this evening

Patton Oswalt's commencement speech at his old high school — "There Is No Them." (via)

July 10, 2008

I Eat Beats — drum sequencer built with webcam, Processing, and a bag of Skittles

Journalist examines America's rail system on an 85-hour trip from NYC to Oakland — nobody cares about the railroads anymore (via)

Bush jokes about America's pollution record to G8 world leaders — "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter!"

iPhone 3G or Millionaire — the choice is easy

Flickr user hit by lightning while recording a rainstorm — "because you insisted, here's the unedited screaming version."

Exclusive: Yahoo! Brickhouse launches BravoNation

Background

Those Medaling Kids

Spelunking the API

Invites

84 Comments (Add Yours)

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