Flickr-spawning service Game Neverending was just a context for socializing. A framing device.

In 2002, [Caterina Fake] and Stewart Butterfield, then her husband, founded Ludicorp, a Vancouver, British Columbia, company whose primary product was a massively multiplayer online role-playing confection called Game Neverending. GNE was less a traditional game than an elaborate online party — a kind of precursor to Second Life. “It was really just a context for socializing,” Fake says. “You know, when people get together on Friday night for bridge, they just want to see each other. The game is just an excuse. It’s a framing device. You really just want to hang out and smoke cigars and gossip.”

People play games because you set up a world, a set of rules -- just a context.

People use Flickr because its where people go to appreciate photos.

People use dailybooth or foursquare because its the place to go for their respective things.

Context -- really an excuse to do X -- is a powerfully important thing to provide. Without context (moreover, a context that makes people do something fun or valuable), your users will leave and go elsewhere.

Smells like victory: Old Spice sales up 107%

Impressive work. Wieden+Kennedy really pushed the envelope and the risk paid off. Brilliant. There's something brash and new about traditional media reaching out and touching you directly. I wonder if there are copycats already in the works.

According to Nielsen data provided by Old Spice, overall sales for Old Spice body-wash products are up 11 percent in the last 12 months; up 27 percent in the last six months; up 55 percent in the last three months; and in the last month, with two new TV spots and the online response videos, up a whopping 107 percent.

--Adweek