The Personal Economics of Farmville « Psychohistory I’ve been playing Farmville, a social video game by Zynga, over the past week, and I have to say that I’m extremely impressed. It’s a very simple simulation game, with well integrated social aspects to promote virality, a good technology tree, and clever virtual goods integration. If you’ve played the game (and at this point, approximately 9 million people have), then you are likely already familiar with the primary economics of the game. As a farmer, you have a certain number of plots. Which crops should you plant? Since I do love an excuse to crack open Excel, I built a simple model that tells you what crops are the “most valuable” to plant. Revenue is just the value of the crop at harvestCost is the cost of the seeds + the cost to plow the square In order to compare crops, I had to normalize the values: Normalized all revenue and costs to “one square”Normalized all revenue and costs to “one day”, namely 24 hours The problem with this model, however, is pretty obvious: Trees / Animals.
How a 40,000+ Employee Company Trains its Employees on Social Me If you need further evidence that social media is here to stay in the corporate world, look no further than Telstra, the Australian telecom giant. The 40,000+ person company makes social media training mandatory for its employees and formalized a policy of “3Rs” - responsibility, respect and representation. Taking things a step further, today the company is trying something about as transparent as it gets – publishing their entire social media training guide online, so that anyone can check it out, learn and critique.We got a chance to take a look at the guide, which takes the form of a comic book but also includes narration from a speaker (in a cool Australian accent too). It starts with the very basics – like “what is Facebook?” – but eventually moves into much more complex issues like “what if my [personal] blog post is critical of Telstra?” To-date, the company says that 12,000 of its employees have completed the course.
Zynga Pushing Nine Figures In Revenues Thanks To Micro-Transactions Zynga, the online gaming publisher, is making a ton of money. Just how much? Well, earlier reports put revenue at something around $50 million, but some new numbers obtained by Sarah Lacy suggests that it’s closer to $100 million. And clearly, it’s accelerating. We’re hearing that the run rate for 2009 may even be well above that. So in case it wasn’t already clear, there looks to be a bright future in the online gaming sphere and specifically around micro-transactions. And Zynga recently transitioned this model to the iPhone, but because the iPhone doesn’t yet allow for in-app purchases, it has been forced to sell expensive versions of its apps like Live Poker, with chips included. Just last week, VentureBeat’s Eric Eldon speculated that Zynga, which is now the largest Facebook app developer, might be trying to raise another large round of funding — something to the tune of $30 million.
What Do I Like About Farmville? What do I like about Farmville? That’s a question that I often get asked by my friends, who obviously don’t play Farmville. So here goes my thoughts and opinions and whatever else you would like to call it – why I play Farmville. I just love its concept, which is also fully supported by the quality of the graphics. I just love to see that my trees actually look like fruit trees in bloom and that my animals look like animals that move and bark and moo etc. Another thing that I like about Farmville is that I can redecorate my farm whichever way I want. Some time back they launched stables and nurseries. The special themes and events coinciding with popular holidays make it even more fun. I also liked the Haiti relief fund initiative in Farmville, where they raised funds for the earthquake relief in Haiti. There are quite a few other points that I can site, but it would take up a lot of time and space.
WhenNOTto UseSocialMedia These days, everyone is talking about social media and discussing what services and tools to use, how to use them, why you should use them, etc. In fact, if you listened to all the advice out there, you would probably think that no matter who you are, whether an individual wanting to build a personal brand, or a large multinational corporation intent on communicating with customers, you should be using social media. But is social media for everyone? Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. According to B&B, a magazine for marketing strategists, there are definitely some scenarios when social media should be avoided. You're in a high-ticket business: The article recommends that businesses with only a few customers who each spend tens of millions of dollars with the company each year are better off not using social media. But Don't Be Afraid to Try!
Zynga by the Numbers By this point everyone has heard of Zynga, the company behind Facebook megahit FarmVille and a slew of other hit social games. But just how big is the company? We decided to take a step back from the rhetoric and take a look at some cold, hard numbers to get an answer. When we could find them, that is. This is an often-overlooked Zynga statistic, despite being one of the most eye-popping of all. The figure above doesn't count part-time employees or contractors, which are very numerous. Talk about rapid expansion! Despite already expanding to over 600 full time positions, Zynga has not yet finished its growth phase. At the Game Developer's Conference in early March, the talk around the Social Games Summit was that Zynga might well surpass Facebook itself in total headcount by the end of 2010. In late 2009 everyone assumed that Zynga was preparing to take the company public. The monthly figure is impressive, but lots of people might check in a game just once a month.
The Mass Appeal of Farmville The most common description that I’ve heard for Farmville is that it’s a pyramid scheme. Nels Anderson, a designer at Hothead games, commented on Twitter that it was the most cynical game design that he had ever seen (“Ending Up Back in the Arcade”, Above 49, 6 October 2009). It is also one of the most played games on Facebook with more accounts than World of Warcraft or even Twitter (“Zynga Facebook App Data”, AppData.com). At GDC this year, Farmville was one of the most debated topics, both hailed as the future of video games and as the end of the industry as we know it. It would be more accurate to call Farmville a pyramid game, instead of a scheme, because there is no real deception occurring between user and developer. If you wait too long, the crops will begin to rot one grid at a time, so you have to make sure to always check up on the game. Neighbors are also handy to have because you can go visit their farm to gain experience by weeding or fertilizing their crops.
SocialMedia v Web2.0 Web 2.0. A few years ago, it was the hottest buzzword around. It refers to the second generation of web apps following the Internet bubble that devastated not only Silicon Valley, but our economy in general. Social Media. While its definition is not yet etched in stone, most believe it describes a new type of media and communication that creates a world conversation and dialogue. Web 2.0 is a term that has been around since 2004. Google Searches Tell the Story I want to illustrate what happened this year in the form of graphs. Things I want you to note: 1. Graph #2 demonstrates search volume in 2009 for just the U.S There's only one conclusion I want you to draw from this graph: Social media has clearly overtaken Web 2.0 in the U.S. Finally, take a look at the graph for December 2009 search volume worldwide for these two keywords: This is the first month where "social media" overtook "Web 2.0" worldwide. In 2009, "social media" bested "Web 2.0."
Facebook, Zynga, Groupon... la valeur des stars du web social a bondi de 300% en un an L'emballement des investisseurs pour les étoiles montantes du web ne faiblit pas. Sur les trois premiers mois de l'année, la valorisation des plus grands sites de réseaux sociaux a bondi de 51% par rapport au trimestre précédent, d'après des données du cabinet Nyppex, relayées par le New York Post. Sur un an, la valeur de ces sociétés s'est envolée de... 377%. Principal contributeur : Facebook, valorisé 65 milliards de dollars à fin mars (+57% par rapport à décembre).