In addition to waging an unprecedented war of words with Hamas on Twitter over its escalating conflict in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has introduced “game dynamics” on its war blog.
These “gamification” features, normally the province of social networking services like Foursquare and Facebook, allow visitors to the IDF’s blog to rack up “points” for repeat visits or numerous tweets, as the blog tracks the progress of Israel’s escalating conflict with al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas. Jon Mitchell, a writer for the tech blog Readwrite who first noticed the IDF’s gamification features, noted that while they have been live since July, “promoting it on the front page during this military campaign is beyond crass.”
“Innocent people are dying on all sides, and the IDF wants to reward people for tweeting about it,” Mitchell added. “It makes me sick.”
via The War Will Be Gamified: Israel, Hamas in Social Media Struggle | TIME.com.