AJ Kim has posted an interesting article about the gaming aspect of social software.

The rules of the game in services such as Google, eBay, and Orkut are enforced and sometimes altered in order to extract the desired information, or to encourage certain behaviors. The rules must also be structured to prevent cheating and abuse, for once there is a game to be won, there will be people who go very far to win it.

Traders in markets such as the NYSE participate in what is probably the largest-scale implementation of social software which uses game play to achieve, through rules governing behavior and information flow, the proper balance between cooperation and competition.