It’s been a crazy week leading up to E3. This week has been all about Google’s Lively, Rockstar Games potential ban on their Bully: Scholarship Edition game. Then you’ve Yahoo, Microsoft’s new love interest, shacking things up as the team with Double Fusion and NeoEdge Networks.
I really want to check out more of Google’s Lively and look at the potential that is containted within. Has anyone tried Lively yet?
A few articles over the weekend touch on Facebook becoming more of a social gaming platform and trying to leverage that success into a subscriber number. You has The Star; Facebookers can now become virtual art dealers and AllFacebook’s; Is Facebook the Napster of the Games Industry?. Both articles are featuring Gabe Zichermann who was the founder of Trymedia and an early client of Napster. Now he’s involved with rmbr.com. He cites a few successful games on Facebook and most notable Scrabulous.
Scrabulous took an established game and leveraged Facebook as a social utility to achieve a new level of success for the game Scrabble (at least its hard to believe that the board game would have over 600 concurrent users 6.22.08)
We’ll see if his own game, Prized Collection, is ready for prime time. You can check out some posts I wrote a year ago on Facebook becoming the next social gaming platform.
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 1
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 2
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 3
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 4
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 5
Facebook: The Next Social Gaming Platform Part 6
Tipster Thursdays is a monthly feature covering technology and how you can incorporate it as part of your marketing plan. We’re going to look at different pieces of technology like Twitter, Pingie, Prologue, SmugMug, Qik and delicious and show you 5 different uses for the technology. This weeks column is going to look at Flickr.
Flickr is an online photo management tool. I’ve been using Flickr for more then a few years now… mind you I need to reactivate my pro account. Flickr has always been about the community. I don’t think it would have gotten to where it is today if it didn’t focus on connecting like minded people.
DeSmogBlog put the power of the community to use for them in their Flickr contest; The Greenest Photo Ever Contest group. They have just over 140 people following the group. These are people who opted-in and wanted to learn DeSmogBlog and help climate change.
DeSmogBlog exists to clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change.
The key to using Flickr from a marketing perspective is to think about it as a community building tool. The question you need to ask yourself is “How can I leverage the community at Flickr”, which could be the following:
Flickr is a great tool and one I use on a regular bases. Getting the most out of social media.. is more about giving your community what they want. What would you use Flickr?
Last week I sent out a tweet about the Top Facebook Applications website. I spent the last week going over the top 10 and seeing what the traditional games all have in common. There are only two traditional games in the top 10… Scrabulous & Texas HoldEm Poker. I find this interesting when you see that Funwall and Super Wall hold the number one and two spots, respectively, for daily active users. What do these two games have in common?
There is only one other game within the top 20 for daily active users and that is Mob Wars. Even Mob Wars holds some of the traits that Scrabulous & Texas HoldEm Poker have. What are the other traits that make a game popular on Facebook?
Tipster Thursdays is a monthly feature covering technology and how you can incorporate it as part of your marketing plan. We’re going to look at different pieces of technology like Twitter, Pingie, Prologue, SmugMug, Qik and delicious and show you 5 different uses for the technology. This weeks column is going to look at Facebook Pages.
..,Facebook Page is a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand. Users can express their support by adding themselves as a fan, writing on your Wall, uploading photos, and joining other fans in discussion groups. You can send updates to your fans regularly — or just with special news or offers. Add applications to your Page and engage your users with videos, reviews, flash content, and more.
Facebook is becoming a larger part of everyone’s marketing plan as we move forward. With their efforts put towards localization (here, here and here) of Facebook outside of the US. Having global brands for video games on Facebook makes sense with 60+ million active uses around the world and 60% living outside of the US.
Imagine if Microsoft’s Xbox team setup its own Facebook Pages to send out updates to its fans on new screens, game news and trailers. It could just include a link back to the studio’s site or your other Facebook pages on Facebook. Or what if you were EA and used Facebook Pages and other social networks to launch mini-versions of your game… EA is planning something like this. The key to using Facebook Pages from a marketing perspective is to think about it as a two way communication platform. The question you need to ask yourself is “How can I let the fans of my game keep up to date on the latest information”, which could be the following:
Keep in mind that everyone on Facebook may not like your brand, company or game… and you’ll need to be prepared to react to negative statement on your Facebook Pages. If things do go wrong you can read my Gamasutra column, Online PR For Games: There Is No Going Back Now, and learn how to react. However, I think the positives far out weight the negatives when it comes to using social media as a marketing tool.
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