November 2011
1 post
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August 2011
1 post
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June 2011
1 post
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April 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Apple Cracks Down On App Store Shenanigans, Leaves...
Apple appears to be cracking down on the use of offer wall providers in an effort to curtail third party efforts to game the App Store rankings using pay-per-install methods. This is very similar to the viral channel throttling that Facebook embarked on in late 2009/early 2010.
In an ironic bit of timing, just as Apple is tightening their policies in this regard Facebook may be about to...
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“This is the unlit social graph, and this is where Facebook is vulnerable.”
– The Unlit Social Graph by Lawrence Coburn
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Social Gaming Growth Underlines Market Shift To...
According to a new report released today from market research firm Parks Associates, social gaming is on track to become a $5 billion industry in the next five years.
Staggering as that estimated growth rate and market size is, according to Juniper, mobile gaming is expected to grow to $11B over the same period.
Both of these parallel trends underline the massive shift to and within digital. ...
Scamville 2: The Mobile Edition
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Cross-promo trickery on the iOS AppStore would appear to be the latest in social gaming offer scams. Shady CPI this time instead of continuance-scheme CPAs…
January 2011
1 post
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“Social Gaming By The Numbers: The Seven Deadly Social Metrics”
– Albert Lai
October 2010
3 posts
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“The key insight is that the interactions of one person affect and organize the...”
– Facebook VP of Product, Chris Cox on “social design”
June 2010
1 post
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“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do…Play consists of whatever a...”
– Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
May 2010
2 posts
1 tag
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“Badges are at risk of becoming the new banner advertisement”
– Foursquare
February 2010
1 post
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WatchThe Game-ification Of Everything
January 2010
2 posts
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“NFO (News Feed Optimization) is the new SEO”
– Justin Smith
Presentation by Hiten Shah.
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Interview With CEO Of Social Gaming Developer...
Atul Bagga analyzes the video game space for ThinkEquity and has recently been doing an interesting serious of interviews with executives in the social gaming space. The below is reprinted here with his permission.
Atul Bagga, ThinkEquity (AB): Please explain your business and why should investors care about Serious Business? Siqi Chen, Founder and CEO, Serious Business (SC): We are one of the...
November 2009
4 posts
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Watch“Beyond the age of information is the age of choices”
-Charles Eames
The legendary design thinker almost certainly did not have virtual goods in mind when he made that statement but, in my opinion, it informs our industry all the same. For, like the consumer staples sector, ours is a business based on consumer choice. The work of Howard Moskowitz (see video) is extremely...
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What The Playfish Acquisition Means For The Social...
With its recently announced acquisition of Playfish, Electronic Arts is now the first traditional video game publisher to make a serious play in the quickly evolving world of social games. In addition to over $2B cash on hand, EA also holds a treasure trove of extremely valuable franchises and brand relationships. While it has been argued that brands matter less in social gaming, I think that...
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“In virtual economies, you have perfect information.”
– William Grosso
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What To Do About Deceptive Offers In Social Gaming
The latest brouhaha in social gaming revolves around the industry use of “offers” to fuel consumer purchases of virtual goods. Today’s social gaming offers are an evolved form of ye olde incentivized lead gen and co-reg. Both of these Web marketing tactics have been around for many years and have a checkered but lucrative history. The checkered bit coming, as it does for many...
October 2009
4 posts
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“Virtual Goods let you monetize your most engaged players”
– Amy Jo Kim
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Designing For Monetization: How To Apply THE Key...
The last several quarters have brought amazing new dynamics to the social gaming scene. Companies are reportedly making more money and hit games are growing faster than even the most bullish pundits could have predicted a year ago. Exciting times. As part of my ongoing exploration of social gaming success factors, I took a crack at exploring how metrics are being applied to shape social game...
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WatchAn insightful and very funny presentation from Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of the Ogilvy Group, on perceived value. While he doesn’t make this connection, perceived value is arguably at the psychological center of all virtual goods transactions.
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Getting Right With Facebook: Social Graph Value...
An article in the Wall St. Journal on ‘how Facebook ruins friendships’ and the recent spate of photo spam on Facebook got me thinking about social network fatigue again and the specific role of social games therein. Protecting the efficacy of the social graph is a key Facebook imperative as it underpins the bulk of the value they are creating. At a very high level therefore it seems...
September 2009
1 post
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“Social game notification length is inversely proportional to click-through rate.”
– Siqi Chen & David King
August 2009
1 post
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WatchGreat talk by Seth Godin on why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department. Cliff notes for those that don’t want to sit through the whole thing:
Winners are those that have something that functions combined with an idea that spreads
Software, more than any other product ever made, markets itself
Figure out how make the software connect and spread, or don’t...
July 2009
1 post
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Social Artifacts: The Powerful Building Blocks Of...
I’ve been using the term “social artifact” for awhile now and it is probably time to publicly debate it a bit, as I think it is an important concept in social gaming. Please leave comments here on this blog or on Twitter if you’re interested in exploring the topic. Here’s the thesis -
Social networks have always revolved around the expression and sharing of...
June 2009
4 posts
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“Good social game ARPUs are $0.30 - $0.70 per month. Top ARPUs are $1.00 - $2.00...”
– Justin Smith
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How To Succeed In The Coming Social Gaming...
Despite the frenzy of excitement in response to the May 2007 launch of the Facebook platform, the early revenue story was not encouraging. It took awhile for social game developers to figure out the non-trivial challenges in applying the virtual currency lessons of their free-to-play brethren to an entirely different space. And the resulting revenues are now looking very nice indeed thank you...
“Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
– George Burns
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Social Network Fatigue: Part 2
Every new advertising format enjoys a honeymoon period where response rates are comparatively high. As the format becomes widely exploited by marketers, consumers adopt filtering techniques and response rates drop - aka advertising fatigue. As discussed in Part 1 of this post, social networking is akin to a new advertising format in that it enables us to broadcast our lives out to our personal...
May 2009
4 posts
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the...”
– Mohandas Gandhi
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Social Network Fatigue: Part 1
“Microbonding” is a term I coined in the late 90s to describe the experience of discovering that someone else shares a particular minor interest or experience with you. It happens at parties, around the water cooler, and on first dates. Every time it gives us a tiny little thrill. “You know that cafe down the alley off of Aoyama-dori in Omotesando?! Wow! I go there every time I’m in Tokyo!” ...
Offers, Lead-Gen, & Social Games
Great post on the long-term viability of incentivized lead-gen in social games. http://bit.ly/aFpq9
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to...”
– Sun-tzu
April 2009
6 posts
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One...Gazillion Dollars!
The upside of the MMO business needs no introduction. It is personified in the multi-billion dollar form of the World of Warcraft franchise. While attempts to be the next WOW have not fared well thus far, it certainly hasn’t stopped folks from trying (Hellgate, Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa, Gods & Heroes, etc.). Gazillion would appear to be the latest contender for the crown and they are...
I just checked up on my Kiva.org loans and continue to be floored by uber-high repayment rate. Those guys are really doing dev aid right.
Colonel Sanders rescued from Dotonbori River in Osaka. Breaks curse. Saves Chicago Cubs? I’m not making any of this up. http://bit.ly/FiE3t
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Gaming On Cloud Nine
Cumulonimbus clouds are the highest-flying clouds around – the ninth highest to be exact. Cloud computing is flying high again these days as well. The seeds sown by the Application Service Providers (ASP) of the dot com boom have blossomed into the Software as a Service (SaaS) companies of today led by powerful, cheap core service offerings from companies like Amazon and Google. The entire...
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
– Groucho Marx
