Social Games Reach Nearly 60 million U.S. Users

Ever played Words with Friends on your iPhone, helped harvest a friend’s crops on FarmVille or put your sports predicting expertise to the test on ESPN’s Streak for the Cash? If so, you are part of the 20 percent of U.S. consumers that have participated in social gaming.

According to a study released last week by The NPD Group, a leading market research company, roughly 56.8 million Americans have played a game on a social network in the past three months.

What makes a game social?

Social games, which are shared through a user’s social network, have three core elements summarized in this post from Social Media Examiner.

  1. Social graph data is an aggregate profile of revealed preferences such as your friends, interests, demographics and lifestyle information.
  2. Game play should be casual and designed for short duration, leveraging-high frequency and brief visits.
  3. Games are usually free to play with revenue generated through virtual goods.

Who is playing social games?

According so Industry Gamers, the average American social game player is below 30 years old, with gender demographics split almost evenly between men at 45 percent and women at 55 percent.

What’s next for social gaming?

The growing world of social gaming, which generated $500 million in revenue in 2009, is getting a boost from companies like Google, which announced early this month that it was buying social network app producer Slide and reportedly made an investment in Zynga, the company behind FarmVille, and Disney who acquired social gaming company Playdom.

The NPD study also noted that 10 percent of social gamers have spent real money on virtual goods and 11 percent said they are likely to purchase virtual goods in the future. Last year, virtual goods brought in $2.2 billion dollars in revenue. In 2011, it is expected that advertisers will spend $293 million on social games and applications.

What does this mean for brands? Would you buy virtual goods from a social gaming application?

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Rene Smith is an intern in the Digital Innovation Group (DIG) at Engauge. She graduated from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in magazines. Rene loves fashion, food, photography, design and technology.

Follow her on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn or view her personal blog.

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Three Types of Video Networking Sites

Sharing information is at the heart of social media. Today’s social networking sites harness the power of word-of-mouth and digitize it online. News, music, photos, videos, and more disperse throughout today’s social sphere as people discover and share their Internet finds.

Videos have risen as a focal point of shared content. In response, networking sites specializing in video creation, exploration, and sharing have also risen on the Internet. These sites fall into three major categories: television/movie access, user-created material and user-created video.

1. Television/Movie Access

  • Netflix (1998): Netflix revolutionized the movie rental paradigm by delivering DVDs right to your door. Now, with their monthly subscription service, you can also instantly stream movies and TV shows.
  • Hulu (2008): Watch the latest TV episodes online, or television classics. And with their latest Hulu Plus subscription, you can watch every episode of current seasons online or via your iPhone, iPad, or TV.

2. User-Created Material

  • Vimeo (2004): Vimeo only supports user-created videos, making this site a haven for artists, filmmakers, and short-film enthusiasts.
  • Blip.tv (2005): Focused exclusively on web shows, Blip.tv offers a route for creators to host and distribute their work. Their platform includes opt-in advertisements, with profits split 50/50 between the content creators and Blip.tv itself.

3. User-Created Video

  • Youtube (2005): Youtube, the largest video-hosting site by both content and userbase, offers a variety of content both from TV and user-created material.
  • Pandora.tv (launched internationally, 2008): Pandora.tv features an individual user’s own personalized channel, as well as their own customizable “playlist.” Add other users’ content to your playlist, which you can share with your friends.

For another list of video sharing sites, check out this article.

What features would you like to see on video networks?

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Kate Hollingsworth is an intern in the Digital Innovation Group (DIG) at Engauge. As an upcoming junior at Emory University studying International Affairs, Classical Civilization and French, Kate plans to graduate in the Spring of 2012. As an officer of Emory’s Amnesty International chapter, she spearheads the group’s online Twitter presence and coordinates participation at campus events. Kate is also an active member of the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA).

Follow Kate on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn, or read her personal blog.

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Facebook launches location-based product, Places

Facebook has finally launched their long-awaited location-based product, called Places. With this new product, you will now have the option to share your location by “checking in” to that place and letting friends know where you are. You can also see if any of your friends have checked in nearby.

To start using Places, you can use it by downloading the most recent version of the Facebook application for iPhone. Non iPhone users can access Places from touch.facebook.com if your mobile browser supports HTML 5 and geolocation.

If you’ve used other location-based services, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, then you’ll have no problem using Places. Checking-in works the same way. All you need to do is tap the “Check In” button on the iPhone app and you’ll see a list of places near your current location. From there, you can choose the place that matches where you are or add it if it’s not listed. After checking in, your check-in will create a story in your friends’ News Feeds and show up in the Recent Activity section on the page for that particular place.

Just like you can tag your friends in photos and status updates, you can also tag your friends who are with you at a location. What about privacy? Facebook appeared to be a little more prepared to tackle the privacy issues and provided more controls for users. You have the option of whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. When you check in, you can tag friends who are with you but only if their settings allow it. When you are tagged, you are always notified (similar to how you’re notified on a photo tag or status update tag).

All check-in activity/history will reside on a new Facebook Place Page. Similar to Foursquare/Gowalla, each place or venue will have it’s own dedicated page. If you’re the owner of that business, there is a process that you can go through to claim your place (see screenshot below). If you claim the location as your business, it will become a Facebook Page or you can merge it with your existing Facebook Page.

Places will be rolled out gradually to users in the U.S. and will be made available to other countries and platforms in the future. What do you think of Facebook Places? Will you use it?

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Two Facebook Page Design Changes Admins Need to Know

Facebook page owners need to be aware of some impending changes to their pages over the course of the next two weeks. In an attempt to optimize new profile and Facebook page formats, Facebook has decided to make a couple of tweaks to the layout of pages.

Specifically, they are removing “Boxes” from the site. In fact, they actually started removing them last month. Additionally, they are reducing the width of custom tabs from 760 pixels to a new, slimmer 520 pixels. For the full Facebook announcement see this post on the Facebook Developers blog.

What This Means for Page Owners

No More Boxes: Historically, Boxes were used in Facebook as a container for applications downloaded by fans/brands to further flesh out their pages. They typically lived in a standalone tab that could be accessed via the tab menu. These are going away.

You’ll want to check your brand’s Facebook pages to see if there will be any impact when the changes are implemented next week. If you’re an admin, your page(s) should already reflect the new view, giving you a glimpse at what your users will see.

Resize Custom Tabs: Take a look at the custom tabs on your page and assess whether or not there’s any impact to the design and layout. Admins can preview custom tabs in the new 520 pixel width and modify before the new design goes live and users view the changes. Otherwise, tabs get resized automatically starting August 23. Facebook appears to be keeping the left rail, which provides more context to the page – providing fan counts, friend info, rules, etc. that is easily accessible.

Future tabs should be designed for the slimmer specs of 520 pixels, instead of the current 760 pixels. Going forward, you’ll want to keep these new design constraints in mind as you develop custom applications and/or new tabs for your brand in Facebook.

Please let us know if you have any other questions about how this impending change could impact your page on Facebook.

- The Digital Innovation Group at Engauge

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