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Febbre da Facebook
Per me è arrivata quasi all’improvviso complice un giochino on line dal nome Mob Wars… Sinceramente all’inizio non coglievo le potenzialità di Facebook e ho impiegato qualche mesetto a trovarmi a mio agio con la piattaforma.
Da un po’ ne seguo anche le vicente “economiche/finanziarie” andando a vedere come l’azienda si posiziona sul mercato ed il suo ruolo all’interno della galassia dei nomi arci-famosi del web.
Vi riporto un estratto di Zuckerberg alla conferenza annuale di Facebook 2008
“Facebook Connect” trasformerà il social network da sito privato, dove tutto avviene all’interno di un “recinto”, a fenomeno che copre tutto il web da cui i produttori di software, con previo permesso degli iscritti, possono attingere i dati degli utenti per utilizzarli sui propri siti.
“Facebook Connect è la nostra versione di Facebook per il resto del web”.
Bhè quindi siete avvertiti
spai: spai lab di marketing, comunicazione, web & nuovi media
PHPizabi - Create Worlds
Bezos Gets His Game On
With an undisclosed investment in Social Gaming Network by his personal fund, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is proving Om right. Back in May, when Bezos invested in Kongregate, another casual gaming site, Om thought it might be the first of many. May is also when SGN raised a $15 million round from Greylock Partners and the Founders Fund.
SGN makes games for social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and has titles that include WarBook and Superlatives. Now that casual gaming has exploded onto the web, the business case isn’t too far-fetched. Revenue comes from ads, selling virtual goods, subscriptions or some mix of those options, with advertising being most prevalent but least effective for casual games.
Gaming has made money, but monetizing social networks is still a struggle, which makes SGN worth watching. Succeeding with advertising depends on getting large numbers of users, which Social Gaming Network — with its 1.1 million daily users — has. It’s facing a Facebook crackdown on spammy applications, which could hinder growth on that site, but is still growing on MySpace and Hi5, which have recently opened up their sites to outside apps. In order to really make money, it needs to push the sale of virtual goods. That might make it the most likely Bezos investment to succeed.
BloggerItaliani.com I Migliori Blog Italiani
Da meno di un mese è nato BloggerItaliani.com, Il motore di ricerca dei migliori blog in italiano della web 2.0! Il progetto nasce dall’idea di Merlinox che ha aggregato i migliori blog in un unico motore di ricerca.
Quindi partecipate all’iniziativa e buone ricerche!
spai: spai lab di marketing, comunicazione, web & nuovi media
A Newbie's Guide to Flock | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET
Firefox: del.icio.us/tag/firefox
browser
network
Firefox
Web2.0
social
Flock
socialnetworking
Social Networking Gets a Sanity Check
After years of hype, noise and funding, the social networking sector is finally getting a harsh, but necessary, sanity check.
Today there are numbers out from comScore that indicate plateauing growth for the big two — MySpace and Facebook — in the U.S. Last week, Revision3 canceled “SocialBrew,” an online video show dedicated to social networking. Meanwhile, Monster killed its Tickle social networking service (first reported in April by TechCrunch), following closely on the heels of CondeNast’s shuttering of Flip and Verizon’s decision to close up its virtually unknown network, which had managed to garner a mere 18,000 members. (Verizon has shifted its community to Facebook.)
And these just might be the tip of the iceberg, for there are way too many me-too networks out there failing to find the traction, and hence the volume, needed to grow their revenues. The lack of monetization will only accelerate this process.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt never misses an opportunity to dis the social networking sector, typically by pointing out how hard it is to monetize social media inventory. Which could just be his way of trying to excuse his company’s inking of an exclusive $900 million deal to serve up advertising on News Corp.-owned properties including MySpace.
But Schmidt’s motivation notwithstanding, what he says is true: In a recent report, eMarketer, a N.Y.-based market research agency, lowered its 2008 advertising estimates for U.S. social networks to $1.43 billion from $1.6 billion. They expect Facebook will take in $265 million and MySpace will bring in $755 million, down from earlier projections of $305 million and $850 million, respectively.
I’m not sure how they came up with these new projections, but let’s assume for a moment that they’re right. That means that MySpace and Facebook together will bring in $1.02 billion in U.S. ad revenue, which leaves about $400 million for dozens of other social networks. eMarketer also calculated revenue per unique visitor for some of the big five:
- Google: $65.55
- Yahoo: $31.25
- Microsoft (MSN): $17.74
- MySpace: $12.85
- Facebook: $11.79
Now juxtapose these numbers against the U.S. traffic trends. Andrew Chen points out that U.S. visitor traffic for both MySpace and Facebook is beginning to show signs of maturing — and plateauing. The latest comScore data released today only reaffirms Chen’s point of view. Couple the new, lower revenue estimates with the flattening in the growth rate of U.S. visitors, what you end up with are tough times for social networking going forward.
Both MySpace and Facebook are seeing the bulk of their growth overseas, but that traffic is even harder to monetize than traffic in the U.S. Indeed, when it comes to making money on overseas traffic, with the exception of Google and Yahoo, most companies have had a mixed scorecard. What’s more, rather than a service unto itself, social networking is becoming just another feature on many web services.
All of these changes are going to continue to have a negative impact, and not just on all-purpose, also-ran social networks, but on the entire ancillary economy, including widget makers. (See our post on Userplane, the really big widget ad network.)
The way I see it, the market has shifted its focus onto niche social networks, such as those dedicated to sports, music, automobiles and pets. You know, sites like Dogster! They have focused, engaged communities, which means they can attract a higher amount of advertising dollars. (Liz came up with a taxonomy of social networks back in February 2007 that offers up an easy way to understand the nuances of the social networking landscape.)
Not only do they have a purpose, but they don’t depend on hit-or-miss behavioral targeting-based ad systems that many hope will one day turn social networks into a gold mine. After all, if you sell dog food, then everyone on Dogster is a potential customer. As for the rest of the sector, it’s only a matter of time before more companies go the way of Tickle, Verizon and CondeNast’s Flip.
Traffic Stats Graph comScore via Techcrunch.
[from wnpxrz] Bayesian networks utilized in creating more mobile social networks | X2
User:jeyrb: del.icio.us/network/jey
network
socialsoftware
research
toread
social
bayesian
SocialNetworks
Ohloh, the open source network
Why Social Gaming Network Got $15M in Funding
What began last March with Warbook, a no-frills Facebook fantasy strategy game first conceived by an intern, has lead to today’s announcement: Social Gaming Network, a startup still based in a Palo Alto garage, is getting $15 million in Series A funding from a VC team comprised of Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, Columbia Partners Capital and Novak Biddle Venture Partners. Originally incubated at the Novak Biddle and Columbia-backed Freewebs, where Warbook was first developed during a hackathon session, SGN now boasts a small library of casual game titles which claim an aggregate of one million daily players and 50 million installs in Facebook.
This influx of cash comes at a moment of fierce consolidation and competition in the social gaming space, with SGN and rivals like Zynga and Rock You jostling for dominance. Last week I had a chance to chat with SGN CEO Shervin Pishevar, and got a glimpse at some of the company’s future battle plans.
While Social Gaming Network’s low-graphics games aren’t likely to be confused with a next-gen title, he told me, they’re successful enough. “Small is the new big, right?” Games like Warbook can be made with a low budget, he noted. “Even having a 100,000 daily active users is good revenue.” (At peak usage with a sponsorship deal, he said, Warbook was making $100,000 a month.) “We’re much more about engagement and retentions than virality,” Pishevar told me.
Over the next few months, Shervin Pishevar and his small team will be working on several top secret games that’ll leverage advertising and virtual item sales for revenue. While still relatively low budget, he’s working with developers to give these new titles more polish. The goal, said Pishevar, is to transform Social Gaming Network into “the Pixar of social games.” Whether that’ll enable them to dominate this space remains to be seen, but $15 million in the bank is a potent advantage.
Bisogna riconquistare il Target: il quarto spot tartago Crazy Marketing Network
Credits:
Agency: Socialware
Players: Filippo Giardina e Mauro Fratini (NonRassegnataStampa.it)
Director: Luca Mobilio
Guest Star: Katia
Bisogna riconquistare il Target: il quarto spot tartago Crazy Marketing Network
Credits:
Agency: Socialware
Players: Filippo Giardina e Mauro Fratini (NonRassegnataStampa.it)
Director: Luca Mobilio
Guest Star: Katia
spai: spai lab di marketing, comunicazione, web & nuovi media
Social Gaming Network Buys Facebook Market Share
Consolidation is already beginning in the overcrowded Facebook application market (with 21,800 apps and counting). One of the first sectors to see buyouts of popular apps is in the social gaming sector. Earlier this year, Zynga bought CLZ Concepts and the Superheroes group of apps. Today, competitor Social Gaming Network (SGN) is responding with its own roll-up of Esgut (which created Suplerlatives, Entourage, and Text Twirl), Free Gifts, Nicknames, Oregon Trail and Friend Block. This moves SGN up the rankings in terms of total Facebook users (48.5 million) that have installed one of its apps, which puts it right behind Slide (97.7 million) and RockYou (72.6 million) and one spot ahead of Zynga (34.7 million). Of course, some of the biggest apps that SGN bought aren’t really games (Superlatives and Entourage), and in terms of daily active users, which is a more meaningful measure, Zynga is still ahead with 1.9 million versus 1.1 million.
Still, SGN is obviously serious about scaling up its business by hiring, acquiring, or partnering with the best Facebook app developers out there. The developers behind Free Gifts, Esgut, and Nicknames have now joined SGN as co-founders. “We are building a brain-trust of leading app talent,” says CEO Shervin Pishevar. He recently spun off SGN from Webs.com and moved his entire team from the East Coast to Palo Alto. And this morning it just released the sequal to its popular Warbook game on Facebook—Warbook:Rise of the Infernals.
The company has also launched its own cross-promotional advertising network for other gaming apps and is in the process of raising $10 million (says an outside source). There are now 70 games and other apps on its Gaming Hub.
One of them, Free Gifts, is now part of SGN. More than 70 million virtual gifts have been exchanged between Facebook members so far. Brands sponsor the gifts, and there is a potential for direct consumer purchase of gifts as well within a gaming context. Pishevar is almost as excited about the prospect of virtual gifts as he is about social games:
It is real, it is happening, it is underground. I think it has a potential to become as important or more important than the advertising revenue.
The race between SGN and Zynga to become the biggest social gaming network is a race for talent, a race for active users, and most importantly, a race to see who can make money first. But while they keep elbowing each other for position, they shouldn’t forget that newer entrants with social-gaming platform ambitions are always trying to close in behind them.
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