Do I get points for that?

Lately, it seems like every time I'm on Twitter I see a post where a person states what he or she did for the day and then proceeded to award his or herself points: "I'm finally getting my office cleaned up. It is way past time that I get things organized. #dapts +200." Additionally, a number of mobile apps are springing up, allowing users to gain "points" for checking in to certain locations (a personal favorite for this is CauseWorld which allows you to collect and donate karma points to certain causes). I find these trends very interesting.

#Dapts or Daily Achievement points are all about scoring points for "doing what you do." So, what does that mean? According to the Daily Achievements site, you can give yourself or your friends points for "anything from eating a sandwich to winning an Olympic medal in curling." Um, okay. Cool. So, I can get whatever amount of points for whatever I feel like. That's appealing, but arbitrary. Oh, and you can "win badges by performing certain tasks. New badges are added all the time to give you ways to bug your terrible friends." Definitely an interesting concepts, but it doesn't seem like the same activity would be rated equally by all so the system appears to have some flaws. However, #Dapts have become increasing popular which leads to certain questions about what all of this means.

Have we become obsessed with scoring points for our daily activities? Does everything we do need to be scored? Are daily activities a contest? If so, how can these point scoring systems be used to change situations such as getting people to eat more fruits and vegetables for more points, to donate money to causes for more points, to generate more sales of certain products?

Here's some thoughts from a friend, Jordan Smith: "You'll earn 30 points for being a baby on the internet, but those points are worth far more than your self respect."

And, here's an awesome podcast from DICE 2010 by Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, diving into the idea of points-based gaming:

Oh, and I'm giving myself #dapts + 500 for writing this post ;)