2011 will be remembered as the year that Zynga filed for its IPO, Google launched Google+, and Facebook executed the Credits transition. With the first potential social gaming IPO, Zynga plans to raise up to $2 billion to fund its continued global expansion. Meanwhile, Google is putting its weight behind what appears to have the [...]
Several of the campaigns featured in our post this week incorporated games into the ways they highlighted products. Car and Driver magazine began a long-term partnership with the Facebook game Car Town that makes the magazine’s content a central part of its print product and brings its print products directly into the game. Then Einstein [...]
Facebook has updated its Platform Polices, prohibiting apps from linking to or promote apps on competing social platforms, and from rewarding users with virtual currency, goods, or downloads through a third-party for taking an action. These policy changes, reported by TechCrunch, will prevent developers from directing traffic from their Facebook apps to off-site destinations, or [...]
With Zynga’s IPO filing on Friday, we finally got some numbers to bear out what had been common, but unproven, industry knowledge: that Zynga had been able to overcome handing 30 percent of its revenue to Facebook and weakening virality on the platform by monetizing its existing user base better. The company appears to have [...]
Since the Facebook Platform’s launch four years ago in May 2007, the company has made many changes to its Platform APIs and Platform policies that have had significant ramifications for all developers in the Facebook ecosystem. And when Zynga goes public, the temperature of broader market’s perception of ramifications of changes that happen after that [...]
Ifeelgoods, a company that lets businesses offer Facebook Credits as rewards for purchases and signups, today announced the closing of a $6.5 million Series A funding round led by Idinvest. As Facebook Credits become the sole payment option on the Facebook Platform this Friday, and more types of digital goods including video and music are sold [...]
If 2010 is remembered as the year that games on social networks became a billion dollar business, 2011 is quickly becoming the year that the industry is starting to mature. Facebook is mandating Credits effective July 1st, creating massive changes in the monetization ecosystem, last year’s hit games are fighting for their lives, and new developers [...]
If 2010 is remembered as the year that games on social networks became a billion dollar business, 2011 is quickly becoming the year that the industry is starting to mature. Facebook is mandating Credits effective July 1st, creating massive changes in the monetization ecosystem, last year’s hit games are fighting for their lives, and new developers [...]
Until the launch of Ping, the music social network feature in iTunes, last fall, Apple looked like it was getting close with Facebook. After yesterday, though, the two companies have never looked more distant. Facebook is not getting any special integration with Apple, and the two companies do not appear to be working together on [...]
Most developers on Facebook have many ups and downs, with an emphasis on the downs over the last 12 months or so as Facebook has cut back on viral channels. Zynga stands out not just for dwarfing the rest of the market, but because it has managed to keep traffic so high for so long. [...]
