Basno awards virtual badges for NYC Marathon finishers

You’ve got your real life, and then you’ve got this hazy virtual life that’s slowly, or perhaps rapidly, coming into focus. As items in our virtual lives begin to satisfy the needs met in our real lives, people look to virtual goods as a case study for this growing trend.

We first covered Basno this past summer, letting you know about the platform that organizations and individuals can use to create digital goods that can then be distributed as they see fit. Through Basno, collectibles like diplomas, certificates or medals can be owned and shared online via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or elsewhere. It makes a lot of sense to me. Why would you have a bulky metal object sitting on your living room mantle when you could have a shiny, virtual object prominently displayed on your Linkedin or Facebook profile?

Today, Basno, a New York City based company, is dishing out Marathon Finisher badges for the athletes that finished the 2011 ING New York City Marathon yesterday, on November 6, 2011. The badges, which became available this morning, are even personalized on the back with the runner’s name and stats. Basno CEO and co-founder Nicholas Thorne says that 70% of people are sharing their medal on Facebook, including +25% adding it to their Facebook profile picture.

“We’re so excited about what putting the NYC Marathon medal online means for virtual goods and what makes them valuable to people in a non-game context,” Thorne says. “The ING NYC Marathon has set a new standard for virtual goods by issuing an authentic digital medal to finishers of the event (+40,000) and, in doing so, will generate an incremental 2.5mm impressions for INGNYCM.”

Basno continues to make great progress as a company and is now distributing a digital award every minute for +40 race organizations. In the coming weeks, Basno will be announcing partnerships with Fulbright Scholarship and the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award. Imagine being able to add an official Fulbright Scholarship badge to your Linkedin profile? Now, that is smart.

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Read our full story on Basno here.