Spanish language contact center solutions continue to expand and social media websites are continuing to embrace this trend at a rapid pace as “the Facebook (News - Alert) Spanish speaking market is large – over 80 million users – and not something organizations can afford to ignore if they want to remain competitive.” And the way to stay competitive is to embrace the gamification trend.

Industry observer Josette Rigsby, contends that “gamification and social gaming are emerging trends that allow organizations to go beyond engagement to stimulate deep audience participation.”

Gartner (News - Alert) has recently predicted that “more than 50 percent of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes. By 2014, a gamified service for consumer goods marketing and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay (News - Alert) or Amazon.”

Last month TMCnet’s Rahul Arora wrote that Upstream, the global mobile marketing provider, announced that it added new features to the gamification engine that forms an integral part of its Marketing Communications Suite technology platform.

“With the upgradation,” Arora said, “the gamification engine now has new features which enable the platform to tailor campaigns so that their frequency, progress and content are driven by highly targeted mobile consumer segments, making it ultimately more rewarding and enjoyable for them.”

Gamification, Rigsby says, “is expected to be one of the most important business trends of the next decade, as the first generation that was raised entirely with video games and Internet enters the workforce.” It would be difficult to say she’s wrong, since as she notes, it uses game techniques, “like rewards,” to make product development, marketing and training and other traditional activities more fun.

Companies who want to expand their appeal are not only developing content for the Spanish-speaking audience, Rigsby says, they’re engaging Latin American firms to actually develop the games to take into account cultural issues.

She gives the example, among others, of Argentinean-based Mindsetstudio, which has developed games for companies like MTV, Cartoon Network and FOX, and Mentez, with locations in Miami, San Paulo and Bogotá, partnering with gaming giant Zynga (News - Alert) to serve a Latin American audience.“Mentez recently introduced a new game, Guerra Maya, on Facebook. It is a Farmville style game, but squarely targeted at Spanish-language Facebook users.”