Facebook Helps Sell Digital Media with Credits: Challenges and Opportunities. Today Warner Brothers announced that it will begin renting movies to users through Facebook applications, starting with The Dark Knight. By allowing users to pay for digital content, not just virtual goods, with its virtual currency Facebook Credits, Facebook is moving in a bold new direction that encroaches on the territory of iTunes and NetFlix. However, Facebook users aren’t accustomed to consuming long-form content on the site, and Facebook historically hasn’t been optimized for this kind of user experience. Though Facebook’s enormous audience gives it some advantages, it will have to overcome numerous challenges to become a viable competitor to established content distributors and begin collecting its 30% fee on Credits spent on content sales. The Warner Bros. promotion allows users in the US to visit The Dark Knight Page, use an application, and pay 30 Facebook Credits (USD $3.00) to gain access to the film for 48 hours.
Advantages and Challenges to Becoming a Content Distributor. How Facebook will be committing “commercide” on July 1st. Alex St. John is president and CTO of social entertainment service Hi5. He was previously CEO and co-founder of WildTangent Inc., the world’s largest online game network with over 35 million monthly unique visitors. “Commercide” to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in online gaming by deciding to impose a restrictive commerce platform on your content producers.
“Advercide” to kill an otherwise successful online commerce business by trying to mix it with advertising incorrectly. I’ve written on several occasions about the many fascinating parallels between the explosion in downloadable casual gaming in the early 2000s and the explosion in social gaming today. The content, distribution channels and business models all evolved very rapidly over a relatively short period of time.
The companies that made the leaps in these areas lived to dominate the market (WildTangent, RealNetworks, Big Fish Games) while early market leaders often imploded (Yahoo, Shockwave). 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Is Facebook a Bubble? Record profits. Hollywood biopic. Time's Person of the Year. There's no doubt that 2010 was the year of Facebook. Everywhere you looked, you saw navy blue. And investors saw green. Recently, with a bit of help from the folks at Goldman Sachs, Facebook was valued at $50 billion--that's billion with a "b"--dollars. And now--what, you thought it wouldn't happen?
What that something might be is anyone's guess. As for Google, it maintains that it doesn't even see Facebook as a threat. Ultimately, how secure is Facebook's position? It's an interesting thought experiment, then: If there emerged a Facebook copycat that paid you for sharing your data--call it Checkbook--would you sign up? But what's unique about Facebook is that the bulk of its value is not created by Facebook. Facebook: With friends like these - Features, Gadgets & Tech. Now, in the great battle for supremacy, we have Google vs Facebook. They are fighting over billions of dollars of potential profits. They are fighting over who will dominate the internet, whose services will be judged superior, who will be called "top dog". And they are fighting over us. Google has long been at the centre of our online experience. Seven out of 10 times, it is our start point for searching the web, and more than 190 million of us use its Gmail email service, too.
There was trembling at the Googleplex when executives heard Facebook was planning a press event just ahead of yesterday's opening of the Web 2.0 summit, Silicon Valley's annual thinkfest about social media, and barely two hours before Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, was due to speak. Facebook product launches these days involve the same cloak of secrecy and frenzy of blogosphere speculation as do Steve Jobs's unveiling of the latest iPhone. There is no rubicon being crossed here. Facebook confirms plans to make Credits the mandatory “universal currency” Updated with analyst comments. Facebook is announcing the next phase in the rollout of its virtual currency, Facebook Credits, which is leaving beta testing today. That means all Facebook game developers will be able to use Credits as their payment system for virtual goods — in fact, Facebook is requiring them to make the switch by July 1. Facebook Credits are a system of points, managed by the social network, that can be purchased or awarded in exchange for marketing offers, then traded in within games for virtual add-ons that enhance gameplay.
It’s a surprisingly large business already: In 2010, the market for such purchases reached an estimated $835 million, according to a report by Inside Network. Facebook planned to make the announcement at noon Pacific today, but it’s releasing the news a little early after TechCrunch got the scoop from an unidentified source and predicted that decision would “ruffle some feathers”. “They see Google as the competition,” he said. Facebook to See a Surge of Artificial Intelligence in the Near Future? Artificial Intelligence has a big future. At least that's what one of Russia's biggest web tycoon says.
And it won't only be used for the robots of your dreams: The Internet's social networking future will have a large AI component, too. That's right--in the future, you may end up friending AI. Yury Millner is the chap in question here, a famously media-shy person who rarely grants interviews. So his recent words with the Russian business daily newspaper Vedomosti are worth paying attention to, not only because one of his companies (DST Global Investment) has a big minority stake in Facebook, but because he's chairman of Mail.ru, which dominates the massive Russian email scene, and which recently raised around a billion dollars in an IPO. So what did Millner say? This is a pretty bold suggestion, but it's backed up by some solid science.
From Germany to Russia: A Model for Facebook’s Worldwide Growth. One of Facebook’s most surprising victories to date, offering proof of its viability worldwide, has been its spread eastward through Europe. The expansion began in the west, spreading through the United Kingdom to France, Italy, even the Czech Republic. Many of these markets had their own social networks which, like MySpace in the United States, seemed viable up until months before being passed by Facebook. After becoming the largest network by market share in any given country, Facebook tends to marginalize its competitors — intentionally or not, its model favors dominance over coexistence.
As Facebook became the top network in country after country in Europe, it began to look as if it might do the same worldwide. However, that has not yet happened. A small but extremely significant group of countries could present challenges that Facebook won’t be able to overcome. Defining those challenges presents a moving target for forecasters. Russia. Lessons In Facebook Game Design: Mike Sellers on Online Alchemy’s Holiday Village.
[Editor's note: We've been covering the latest discussion around possibilities in social game design this week. What's the place of synchronous gaming on the Facebook platform? What about races, tournaments, deception, tolls, and all sorts of other mechanics? Below, Mike Sellers of game developer Online Alchemy shares his experiences building a game that featured a shared virtual space -- and the trouble he and his team encountered given the current mindsets of Facebook gamers. For context on the topic of social game design innovation, see this recent presentation by Playdom's Raph Koster and follow-up commentary by guest columnist Tadhg Kelly.] Holiday Village is a social game developed by Online Alchemy and launched on Facebook in late 2010.
It allows multiple players to create a small “Christmas village” together. Holiday Village started out as an idea by Samantha LeCraft, a designer at Online Alchemy. The 25 Most Liked Pages on Facebook, Spring 2011. The top 25 Facebook Pages on Facebook by the number of Likes each Page has reflects what we’ve seen previously on our posts. Which is to say, top brands like Starbucks and Coca-Cola, popular musicians like Eminem and Lady Gaga, celebrities like Cristiano Ronaldo and Megan Fox, television shows like “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons,” and social networks like Facebook and YouTube are still favorites on Facebook.
The only Community Page on the list is for Music — unsurprising given that 44 of the top 100 Pages are music-related. We gathered the information for our list with our PageData tool, which counts the number of Likes as Pages grow. Pages on our list ranged from 41.8 million for Texas Hold’em Poker and 21.5 for the singer Akon; last time we compiled a list, Zynga’s Poker game was still on top with 25.5 million Likes. Which is to say, top Pages continue to grow and the standard for what a “big” Facebook Page is continues to change. Top 25 Facebook Games For May 2011. Going into May 2011, many of the games from April’s top 25 Facebook games stay with us while some foreign language games vanish. Add to that a few notable newcomers, and you’ve got our top 25 Facebook games for May 2011. First up, we sort the top 25 by daily active users.
This gives us an idea of which games people tend to visit habitually. Be sure to compare this list to the top 25 monthly active users list for an idea of which games have a higher retention rate (or “sticky factor”) with players. Remember that DAU is vulnerable to sharp fluctuations as a result of ad campaigns, technical difficulties, and holiday lulls when people aren’t visiting Facebook when they usually would. Our first notable newcomer on this list is Playdom’s hidden object game, Gardens of Time, at number 16.
The game has seen rapid growth since its early April launch, routinely making our weekly lists of top 20 games by growth. Next up, we sort the top 25 by monthly active users. The New Yorker Tries Requiring Users to Like Its Facebook Page to Access Articles. The New Yorker magazine has made one of its articles available only to those who have Liked its Facebook Page. The test of a Like-gate for text-based content is a break from more popular distribution methods such as making articles free online, freemium (charging for only some content), and paywalls that require a paid subscription. If Like-gating of certain articles successfully draws Likes and generates increased Facebook referral traffic for the publication’s website, other text-based content providers might consider adopting the model as well.
The New Yorker’s Page, which reportedly had 200,000 fans earlier this morning, has already acquired 4,000 more Likes. The article “Farther Away” by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Jonathan Franzen will be available to fans of The New Yorker’s Facebook Page for one week. Facebook began formally allowing applications and Pages to gate content behind Likes in late 2009. Another Facebook co-founder shows evidence of alleged fraud. When Paul Ceglia claimed that he owned 50 percent of Facebook and sued Mark Zuckerberg last year, not many people believed him. Ceglia had waited seven years to file his lawsuit and was a convicted felon who had been charged with fraud on an unrelated company. Facebook dismissed his claims as fake. Now it looks like this is one headache that won’t go away and could cost the company a lot of money in legal fees — and possible damages.
Ceglia is back, and it looks like his lawsuit could be a lot more annoying and difficult to dismiss now. Ceglia has hired a major law firm, DLA Piper, to handle his case. Facebook told Business Insider that the emails are fabricated. Orin Snyder, Facebook’s outside counsel at the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutchr, said, “This is a fraudulent lawsuit brought by a convicted felon, and we look forward to defending it in court. [photo credit: Business Insider] VB's working with marketing expert Scott Brinker to understand the new digital marketing organization. Court says Winklevoss twins must accept Facebook settlement.
Updated Facebook’s long legal dispute with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss may be ending. A US appeals court ruled today that the Winklevoss twins must accept the settlement they reached with Facebook back in 2008, according to reports in Reuters and elsewhere. The twins famously alleged that after they hired Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to work on their project ConnectU, he stalled their site and stole the idea for his own social network. (And of course the story was dramatized last year in the film The Social Network.) Facebook reached an agreement with the twins for $20 million in cash and $45 million in stock. But while the Winklevosses may have seen this as an issue of justice, the courts were apparently unimpressed by their specific legal grievances. The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace.
Top 25 Facebook Games for April 2011. Top 25 Facebook Games for April 2011 April kicks off with 14 games shrinking in terms of monthly active users and 15 with fewer daily active users than they enjoyed a month ago. Between the two charts, generated using AppData‘s Top Applications Leaderboard, we see that Mafia Wars sits higher in MAU versus DAU as the result of a late month cross-promotion campaign in CityVille. On the day the campaign launched, Mafia Wars hit a high of nearly 5.6 million DAU compared to its April 1 showing of 2.3 million DAU.
We find that drawing overt conclusions from shifts in our top 25 Facebook games by DAU presents some challenges. Second, a DAU count does not always factor in a game’s intended play cycle. We’d love to hear your ideas on how to address the challenge of accurately representing a game’s DAU for our monthly top 25 articles. All results of our Top 25 articles are based on information collected from AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and their developers. Sponsored Post.