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 loosen theirs. It remains to be seen if Apple will follow the same trajectory here eventually but, it does underline the elephantine content discovery problem on iOS and corresponding lack of officially-sanctioned marketing tools for addressing it.
“This is the unlit social graph, and this is where Facebook is vulnerable.” — The Unlit Social Graph by Lawrence Coburn
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. According to Electronic Arts, digital now accounts for 45% of the overall games market up from 31% in 2008.