What are other websites like edhelper.com?

Gamification: What makes websites like mentalcow.com sticky?

• A few friends of mine have been going nuts over a site http://mentalcow.com.  Is there more to websites like http://mentalcow.com than pure novelty?  Could there even be a future monetization model?   What makes sites like this so sticky?

• Answer:

  I'm going to take the high road and only answer the sticky part right now since I had such a long answer. --- http://Mentalcow.com was new to me, but after spending some time on the site a few things come to mind. Simple design. It doesn't hurt that the site is very minimal and has a clean interface. All of the buttons for the actions I can take are easy to spot and identify Easy onboarding Right when you hit the front page you're presented with a short poll question and a few answers. Already you haven't spent much time on the site and you know exactly what to do. Low barrier to entry Answering a question is not going to take you much time. You can answer one or many, it's entirely up to you. Also not signing up first to play is a big win. There's a sense of instant gratification here. *** The exception being the captcha for each response. That gets tedious and annoying quickly. However as far as sticky goes, I didn't find it terribly addicting. That doesn't mean it hasn't already taken a few steps in the right direction. For ideas on "what makes sites like this so sticky"... For me it lacks the feeling of a site is currently being used. It may be popular with your friends, but only a few minutes on the site and I can't tell if I've been the first player in months or the latest in a sea of thousands. Right now the design emphasies the comments, but when thoese comments are lacking (as they were on all of the polls I responded to) it's highlighting an empty lonely feel of the site. It's also hard for me to want to come back. The easy onboarding can be a double edged sword. Easy for me to come and play quickly, but because I haven't made any investment, it's easy for me to leave. Profile customizations and poll performance tracking come to mind. But this depeneds on the goal of the site - long term use or quick disposable polls. For me, if I'm going to spend time writing a poll question I'd like to know how it did. I want to keep tabs on my "score" overall. Do my poll questions get the most responses? If so let me know, then let me show it off to others. Maybe a leaderboard of poll question writers. Or the opposite, a leaderboard of most answered. There's a lot of details like this that can make the whole experience a bit more satisfying. As mentioned above, the initial steps are great, but as far as keeping me around and having me return time and time again, I'd like to build my nest and start investing in the site before it becomes a regular thing.