Games in Social Networks

In 2009 virtual goods sold to consumers globally was estimated to 2,2 billion dollars and the amount is predicted to rise up to more than 6 billions in year 2013. Virtual worlds and MMOs have until now driven the growth of virtual goods but today the fastest growing segment is social games.

In the middle of 2007 Facebook was born, the social network that was about to change our way to communicate with each other online as well as offline. Today the network is growing by 27 million unique visitors per month and more than 500 million users visit the site every month. More than 70% of all Facebook users engage in game applications.

Even if Facebook today is the dominating social network online, it only makes up to 30% of all unique visitors of social networks world wide. The other 70% of social networking traffic consists of new actors that just realized the benefits and possibilities within social gaming.

Smaller network seem to benefit of size. Users of more than one network tend to split his time between Facebook and other smaller networks. When Facebook is the big mall for everyday purchase, the smaller networks take the role of the local pub: a close knit community where knowledge and experience is open shared between users.

Implementing successful social games is not easy. New technology, new skills and an ongoing commitment are required to succeed. There are three fundamental parts of the strategy: the platform, the content and the distribution. If one of these parts is weak or missing, the investment will fail.

A mistake many new actors make is to copy the strategies from today’s Facebook applications not thinking about the benefit Facebook have in it’s size and massive success. Facebook can afford decisions that aren’t always the most successful ones for game applications and platforms.

Instead new actors should look at what Facebok did in it’s early days to make applications a fundamental part of the experience or use today’s smaller networks as examples. My Yearbook and Fubar are great examples of how social gaming can transmit engagement and monetize the potential of social games.

Read more at Mashable.com