Instagram selling for $1 billion dollars generated surprise, and envy. Perhaps people can understand a strategic rationale for Facebook buying it, or competitive impulse, but the befuddlement remains. You can hear the suppressed snicker coming from the mainstream business prairie: they weren’t making money, but hey, for the team itself, hooray! Everyone agrees they’re really nice young …
The recent rise of mobile as a key platform in the gaming space is accompanied by meteoric growth in asynchronous gameplay. Not what you typically envision when hearing of the latest “multi-player videogame,” asynchronous games do not require the two or more participants to be playing simultaneously; rather, players make turns at their convenience. Chart …
“How many pop-ups is too many pop-ups?” asks the Frisky Mongoose. Shouldn’t there be a more reasonable cap on pop-up notifications, so players can get busy playing (and spending money, for that matter)? Log-in interruptions are particularly bothersome in my opinion, but some games are offering smoother entry these days, so I’ll just assume that’s …
This weekend over at Frisky Mongoose, I rambled off a lengthy list of reasons why people play social games, and I think its fair to say that Facebook game developers are doing a lot of things right. Now can they change their click-only interfaces to feed players who are hungry for more? People will click …
Now that Facebook apps can no longer send notifications to users, social game developers are implementing new methods of keeping in touch with their players. Here’s an overview of recent game updates from a few top social titles, as reported on FriskyMongoose.com. First, in case you’ve been under a rock, the background: Facebook notifications will …
Earlier this week, New York City’s Jacob K. Javits Center played host to a convergence of two trade shows, as both the 107th American International Toy Fair and Engage! Expo welcomed a diverse group of exhibitors and speakers. For certain attendees, the pairing of Toy Fair with the Engage! Expo, a conference that focused primarily …
Facebook is staggeringly huge. They have over 400 million active users, half of whom log in on any given day, over 500k active applications, and can rattle off plenty of other impressive totals for those who’d like to listen. As an open platform, they have provided companies like Zynga and PlayFish with millions of dollars …
Zynga announced today they are launching another Sweet Seeds for Haiti campaign in FarmVille, the enormously popular Facebook farming game, and some other Zynga favorites like Mafia Wars and Zynga Poker.
Unless you have been living under a social media rock for the past few months, you (or if you are not willing to admit it, “someone you know”) have most likely participated in the latest sensation to hit the games industry – social gaming. Redefining the market and shifting demographics of those traditionally associated with …