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Friday, August 24, 2012

Facebook Gamers: Myth or Reality?!

Facebook has always looked for innovative ways to increase engagement on its social network. But lately as things are not going too good for them on the stock market, they are looking for other ways to make money via advertising. So, things are even more rapid and anarchistic then before.

Nowadays it would be a safe bet to assume that they have turned to appeal users to play games on Facebook. I'll leave the "how much that is working for them" conclusion to you.

Today the company has released that they now have 235 million people playing games on Facebook, 30 million more than last year then it had 205 Facebook "gamers". Also, the App Center, Facebook's newly redesigned app marketplace launched in May this year, now has 150 million monthly users, with 2.4 times more installs of apps compared to Facebook's old directory/dashboard and a next-day return rate of 35% to those apps after the first install (17% are likely to return within a week time). [Good news for Facebook, and good news for the average Facebook gamers].

So, it's no secret that Facebook app and games usage is increasing. From the other numbers one of the most interesting is the rise of Europe in the games market on Facebook. Facebook claims that 5 of its top 10 games developers are from Europe. This is a big rise compared to last year when Europe had only 1 developer company in the top 10. The best European games developing company is King.com. This company is now the second best developer on Facebook, with only Zynga above them, currently brings in 51 million MAUs.

"We want to drive the same type of traffic we drive to mobile that we drive to web," said Matt Wyndowe, product manager for apps and games at Facebook, when he spoke today at the GDC Europe conference taking place in Cologne, Germany. While this is obviously good for Facebook and its metrics for user engagement, Wyndowe claims that developers benefit, too:

"Many game developers find that people who sign into their mobile apps with Facebook are more engaged and spend more money," he said. The company is continuing to expand the functionality it offers developers - for example with the recently updated iOS SDK.

So in the end Facebook does have some interesting numbers. We all know that people who play games on Facebook are more engaged and competitive, which in turn means that they will probably stay on the site longer.

What is your opinion? Does Facebook have a bright future, and will gamers migrate to Facebook more? Are Facebook Gamers myth or reality?


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