MarkThink

Facebook Platform Changes Will Help Small Games More than the Zyngas

Most of the blog coverage of yesterday’s Facebook Developer Garage focuses on the above functionality changes and is missing the real beef of what’s going on. The changes in the Facebook Platform Policy are much more important than the functionality changes.

Zynga is the master of viral distribution and many others copy their best practices (one notable exception being Playfish, who is quite reserved on their viral features). If I were to exaggerate, Facebook has taken a long hard look at what Zynga and its copycats do and decided to forbid many of their most successful practices:

via jussilaakkonen.wordpress.com

Following up on my Zynga post, I came across Jussi Laakkonen's article that explains how the recent Facebook changes will help small games. His attitude is refreshing, positive and shows a great entrepreneurial spirit. Check his six reasons why the Facebook Platform changes will help small games and his observations on the importance of the policy changes versus the functionality changes.

The social gaming companies are innovating social media marketing faster than any other product category. It's a great test bed for new marketing tactics.

Zynga's $50 Million Investment in Facebook

What Zynga is showing is that it is willing to copy, then innovate on high-quality games perfected by others, and use its market size, cash, and optimization techniques to do that. Its cross-promotion efforts include strategically placed buttons for Café World in other games, including hits like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, YoVille and more. In terms of money, we’ve heard from multiple sources that Zynga is spending $50 million on Facebook ads this year. Meanwhile, Zynga isn’t just coming out with quality new games. It keeps pumping out new versions of existing games, like its recent expansions of Mafia Wars.

via www.insidesocialgames.com

Social game leader Zynga are reportedly spending $50MM/year to advertise on Facebook. From an advertising perspective, it is a slam dunk: highly targeted prospects with easy, immediate conversion opportunity and positive reinforcement (the viral part of the game) encouraging repeat business. It will be interesting to see what kind of site changes Facebook is going to be willing to make to improve the experience for game companies like Zynga.

It has been interesting for me to see friends and family in the 50+ age bracket get addicted, er, involved, in the Mafia Wars and now Farmville. These games have brought a lot of dedicated users to Facebook from a demographic that Facebook is not necessarily targeting. The game companies are in a unique position as a source of acquisition and ad revenue. And the opportunity for more revenue with intelligent virtual economy partnerships.

Side note: Inside Social Games is a pretty good site. Seems like a natural acquisition / partnership with the larger tech news sites.

Project: Using Wolfram Alpha for Marketing

 

I've enjoyed WolframAlpha since the launch earlier this year. I'm going to experiment with some ways to use it for marketing over the next couple months.

Have any use cases you want researched?

Ubermeta: Creatively Skewering Social Media to Get Social Media Pickup

Time for today's social media laugh. Warning: not safe for work or sensitive social media types. 

And yes, I'll try xtranormal.com when it gets back up. Apparently they're down due to a huge traffic spike. 

(Via Inside the Marketers Studio.)

Reminder: The internet already has changed your business

* If you say, out loud "the internet is going to change my business" you are f**ked. It already has changed your business. All that is over. But there's some good news, it probably hasn't changed that much. All you need to do is work out which bits of your business are good and then concentrate on those.

* You work too late. Really. It's no good for you. Stop it.

via noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com

Great, quotable observations from designer Ben Terrett. These are just two good ones. Go read the rest.

Calling all developers: announcing the TypePad Platform and Developer Program

In the last year we’ve rebuilt TypePad from the ground up and introduced social networking features such as profiles, following, microblogging, and status updates to our bloggers. We've invested in making TypePad the most secure, stable, scalable and social blogging platform, but until now the only way to use it was through TypePad.com. Today we are very pleased to announce the launch of the TypePad Platform, where any developer, blogger, publisher, or corporation can use the TypePad “cloud” through our open APIs.

via www.sixapart.com

I'm looking forward to the next generation of social apps built on the TypePad, Twitter and Facebook platforms. The future of the web is not on the web; it is everywhere, all-the-time, on demand. Intelligent services like the TypePad cloud are going to make it happen.

Making Money Online Requires Giving People What They Want

This begs the question will there be two webs -- The AM web and the FM web? The answer is yes and it already exists. The FM web is where we go to for rich media experiences - videos, gaming – where we go to have fun. Because these experiences immerse us, the type of marketing should be different. The AM consumption behavior to ‘get what we need and move on’ lends itself much better to DR where in more immersive digital experiences brand messages should wash over so we recall them as we walk through the supermarket.

This brings us back to the misalignment. Revenue starved publishers and budget hungry advertisers have been infatuated with demand gen dollars for display and have gone so far as to rip DR a new one (while gladly taking their ad network backed money). This desire for more media budget has also manifested a false and unaccountable sense that DR ads diminish the publishers own brand value. It’s all a bunch of crap both from a user sentiment perspective and performance perspective.

The lesson is that understanding the way people consume media is paramount to optimizing it for revenue generation both with your original content and your advertiser content.

via www.optimizeandprophesize.com

Jonathan Mendez has a nice analogy of FM and AM radio advertising and the web. Different content and different audiences require the different ad content and types; trying to fit one size to all is not working.

Future of Sports Reporting? The Red Reporter: A Cincinnati Reds Blog with serious issues

In the second inning, Brandon Phillips used his speed to reach on an infield single, and Scott Rolen drew a walk.  Then Jay Bruce announced that he was here to hit home runs and chew bubble gum... and he was all outta bubble gum.  Reds 3, Cardinals 0.

Joey Votto then made a matching donation to Jay Bruce's Give Kids In the Outfield Seats a Baseball Fund.  Reds 4, Cardinals 0.

via www.redreporter.com

...and he was all outta bubble gum.

I've read the Cincinnati Enquirer for my "home town" sports coverage since I was a kid. They still have a decent beat reporter and intelligent editorial, but they can't compete with [somewhat] independent sports coverage from a site like The Red Reporter. It's a great combination of geek/stat baseball, history, Reds' community aggregation and humor.

And yes, I know the team is not even .500 and it's embarrassing that I still check the box score this late in the season. At least I don't get angry after a loss anymore.

RSSCloud Vs. PubSubHubbub: Why we will all win

First, PuSH doesn’t just tell you that something changed, it actually sends you the new content (also known as a “fat ping.”) This is an important feature that is missing from rssCloud.  Not only do fat pings make integration simpler for subscribers, they also eliminate the danger of inadvertent denial of service attacks as thousands of subscribers respond to the ping notification and request the updated feed at exactly the same time.  This problem is well known in computer science and is often referred to as “the thundering herd problem.”  While this would be relatively simple to fix in rssCloud, it has yet to be addressed.

via www.techcrunch.com

Nice comparison of RSSCloud and PubSubHubbub from Josh Fraser on TechCrunch. Exciting stuff is happening...

Looking Good Online: 5 Elements of Pro Looking Blog Design from Niya Sisk

via everything.typepad.com

Great presentation from Niya Sisk about making your blog look good. It's part of a great series of presentations about blogging for small businesses led by Andy Wibbels and Claire Alcock.

Hopefully I stop talking about blog design and start redesigning my blog this weekend!