1. What are Social Games?

Social Games = Casual Games (user engagement) + Social Networking (viral distribution)

Basic types of social games include:

• Multiplayer games that utilize the social graph as part of the game. (Parking Wars, PackRat,..)
• Games which mainly involves socializing or social activities like chatting, trading, or flirting. (Farm Ville, Pet Society, Friends For Sale…)
• Turn-based games that are played within a social context or with friends. (Texas Hold’em Poker, Scrabble,…)
• Competitive casual games with friends-only leaderboards. (Who Has the Biggest Brain?, Word Challenge,…)

2. Working Principles

Most of social games work on four basic principles:

• Simple gameplay, which does not require much tactical or strategical thought. Just simply click on something and get the reward, then make it to other higher rewards in similar steps
• Real-time based element, which require you to wait for sometime when starting a process and doing activities. It doesn’t take much time for each visit but requires you to come back everyday, or even several times per day.
• Microtransactions, which are the solution for the dilemma of real time elements. To advance faster, game players need to buy more clicks or more rewards per time unit. For those who don’t want to spend money, they can do something like signing-up or taking a survey with the game company’s commercial partners
• Network connections, which means using the power of social networks. Friends can help or recruit each other in a social game even if you aren’t online at the same time.

So basically, the common rule is to get people hooked with easy rewards, then block them from gaining those rewards as fast as they want, make them pay you money directly or via another company, and encourage them to invite all their friends to participate. In fact all of these games can be played without spending any real money, and without signing up for shady offers to receive more in-game currency. But in-game earnings will never be enough to keep things interesting. That’s the story!

3. Top Games

4. Top Companies

Most of social-game companies have built their entire business model around relatively tiny micro-transactions. Because the games are free, what companies are trying to do is get as many people engaged in the game as possible. Then they try to maximise the number of those players that we can offer something interesting to – that they would be willing to pay money for. Furthermore, the companies also try to maintain players’ interest through constant updates.

Current big players include:

• Zynga – 700 employees and $200 mil revenues in 2009, the developer of Facebook.
• Playfish – 250 employees and $75 mil revenues in 2009
• Playdom – 300 employees and $50 mil revenues in 2009, the leader on MySpace

Even these companies have made huge revenue, their reputation is going down. Last year, Tech Crunch revealed a video featuring Zynga CEO Mark Pincus saying the company “did every horrible thing in the book” to make money off of player. It was a hit to the company and players at that time

5. Security and Social Risks

• To accumulate significant amounts of currency, players can either purchase some with their credit card or sign up for an account or do some surveys with a third-party service. But it found that these surveys contain risks with its request to get your mobile phone number and end up at subscription for an unknown service at a specific cost.
• Being targeted by hackers and viruses is another possibility of playing social games. Some bugs can destroy all of your game progress.
• Spamming friends by numerous updates, requests or invitations might cause inconveniences and may lead to losing some “real” friends

6. Future of Social Games

• The expansion of social networks in terms of size and popularity will bring social games to more users. Furthermore, social networks are widely seen as the new email and the new SMS diving rich, shared content that capitalizes on mass interaction
• The development of smartphone market, app market and social networking usage on smart phones will enhance the popularity of social games.
• Game companies are planning to build up their own social networks
• Current social game players are aged between 18 and 34 but the 40+ market and the “mass market” are also present and potential.
• The upcoming social games will be more targeted and diverse in categories in order to cope with the increasing competition.
• The second generation of social games will be more developed in terms of gameplay and graphics. With Flash 10′s 3D capabilities, 3D games may be coming to social networking sites soon.
• More channels and methods of trading virtual goods will be established. More online platforms to support game players will become popular.

The Ipsos LMX Family survey of 715 parents of kids 12 and under conducted this winter found dads are spending 50% or more time than moms with kids online, playing video games and going to movies, live theater or sporting events.

By a 33% to 26% margin, the dads were also more likely to be friends with their kids on social networks — remarkable not just because dad is more likely to be the social-media guardian, but also because all the kids in the study were under the officially required age to join Facebook or many other social networks.

Overall, by a 72% to 67% margin, dads are more likely than moms to say they spend more time with their kids than their parents did, Ipsos found.

What dads are making time to do, however, is largely the fun stuff.

“Moms are still more than responsible for the cleaning, cooking, shopping and staying on top of everyone’s practical needs and wants,” said Donna Sabino, senior VP-kids and family insights for Ipsos. “But it is definitely a change, and one for the positive psychologically, that dads are participating more in all aspects, although not to the same level as moms in that day-to-day practical stuff.”

As for the fun, 73% of dads said they’d played a video game with their kids in the past week, vs. only 38% of moms. Not surprisingly, the balance was heaviest in favor of dads on “shooter,” action and sports games. Moms were also less likely than dads, but by slimmer margins, to play racing or strategy games with kids.

Dads were at least 50% more likely than moms to have watched movies or TV shows with their kids in the past week, too. And they were also more likely, but by smaller margins, to in the past year have downloaded music, found educational content or attended live theater, sports or concerts with their kids.

“Dads realize what they do now with their kids has a payoff through their kids’ lives in creating good memories,” Ms. Sabino said. “I think it’s just a smarter generation of dads, and more sensitive to the needs of their kids.”

To that sensitive point, more dads in the survey (53%) than moms (45%) said they try to “always find good family movies to watch as a family at the theater.”

Incoming search terms:

• cach doi pokemon
• dudoanbongda

1. Social Commerce:

Group buying + Facebook Commerce + Mobile Commerce

It’s all the same thing: new ways to leverage your social circle to help you shop or share your haul. Social commerce with the end goal of increasing conversions, leads, and sales started to gain attention years ago with consumer reviews and began to escalate in different methods. The connection of social media to sales, sales indicators, promotions, and other measurable or valued marketing and sales conversions, including couponing, is fueling the investment in social media as companies begin to prove the capability to drive commerce.

* Group buying: You should have heard of sites, such as Groupon, that sell for discounts if you get your friends to “group” together to buy a product or service? Like all kick ass ideas this one is incredibly simple and instantly understandable and there is something in it for everybody. Groupon and like-minded sites are expected to continue to grow, offering a new way to reach different audiences.
* Facebook commerce: 
Facebook has joined the social shopping market by launching its functionality called Facebook Connect. In short, you can now sell on Facebook by letting your customers buy, but also letting them tell their friends. And letting their friends tell their friends. Even if you don’t offer ecommerce on your website, it’s now possible to provide that service through the social network. And it’s overly simple to set up. YouTube has been recently extracted this concept with what was described as the first “YouTique” launched last September, by French Connection.
* Mobile Commerce: Mobile payments enable eCommerce merchants to expand their offerings and create new experiences on the phone, a trend we expect to see continue as mobile blurs the line between offline and online. Shopping will become even more social. Your mobile phone will soon become your identity.

2. Content Curation: Branded Content
Brands are starting to realize that one of the main ways of engaging their customers and offering value is to create content that enriches the user’s social media experience rather than just blasting messages out at them. All companies should become media companies, in that the content they provide is valuable, consistent, and non-salesy. With users starting to get more and more aware of ads and adding their own filters the smart brands will create bespoke content that engages users in a meaningful way and offers value. Building that content in to Facebook and other social sites while all hooking back to their own website will be crucial with video playing a more and more important role in the branded content play.

3. Crowdsourced Innovation
Crowdsourcing as a term and idea is nothing new, but 2011 will likely be the year where it becomes a core part of many organization’s social and customer engagement strategies. Additionally, there is an increased understanding from customers about the concept of Croudsourcing, which means it will no longer just a way of engaing the social media savvy, but rather a much broader audience who will share their ideas and thoughts with brand simply for the reward of recognition and being heard by the brands they purchase form everyday.

4. Niche Location / Location Casting
The ability to drive commerce and hence expand the potential advertising and marketing opportunities is fueling the growth of location-based social networking. Location is a key factor in the future of search, social, commerce, and media, among a lot of other things. It is the most important signal to emerge in the database of intentions since the link. If 2010 belonged to Foursquare and its playful, competitive and sometimes addicting ecosystem of badges, mayorships and specials, it’s likely that Facebook will rain on Foursquare’s parade in 2011 with its completed Facebook Place.

5. Social Gaming
New media models are being built based on virtual goods and currency, currently connected directly to the increasingly popularity of social games. As a category, social gaming has grown incredibly quickly, becoming one of the dominant drivers of usage on Facebook. The current leader moving this trend is Zynga, which is building a new media model from micro-transactions. From this trend, viable marketing opportunities are emerging, so-called “engagement ads.” These are basically an exchange between a player and an advertiser, where players earn points or currency to raise or extend their game play in exchange for some brand-related activity like taking a quiz or sharing an ad on Facebook. The power of gaming to drive revenue and marketing benefit for advertisers, as well as its increasing capacity to catch mass engagement, is driving not only new offerings but also new partnerships, startups, and other innovations.

Incoming search terms:

• the database of intentions