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Testing virtual gifts before Xmas.

Previously I reported on virtual gifts. Facebook virtual gift app
Before Xmas I added some Xmas gifts.

I added them 5 days ago and Xmas hasn’t arrived yet, but a quick report:

・Out of 27 items total, I added 3 Xmas ones.
・For the Xmas items I took some unpopular items and changed them into Xmas colours, and gave them a name like “MerryXmas!”.
・User number hav increased And each item is growing by about 5%.

Results:
Comparing data from 5 days ago,
The top 6 items have grown 1.21 times and the Xmas itrms 2.12 times in usage

fukushima | Blog | 2009/12/20

Facebook changes due on the 20th Dec.

We’ve passed the 20th but..,
according to the Facebook Roadmapthere are changes due on Dec 16th. .. which seem to have been altered to the 20th!
Our apps will be affected also, but we can’t test anything until Facebook actually makes the changes….
It would be great to be able to do a β test on a separate server. Usually things just go live pretty quickly..
The outline

fukushima | Blog | 2009/12/16

(日本語) Facebook Adsの使い方と成果報告

Sorry, this entry is only available in 日本語.

fukushima | Blog | 2009/12/09

Zynga’s PetVille and what’s in stall for next year

Zynga has released another new title. Starting off with 22592 MAU.

Just when rival Crowdstar has released Happy Pets, this arrives.
But Petville is not made around the premise that you buy and sell pets in volume.

The flash artwork is top quality.

This article explains things so here’s a brief summary of it.

PetVille Getting Started Guide: How to Make Cash Fast(Games.com)

fukushima | Blog | 2009/12/06

(日本語) 位置ゲー＋モノポリー案

Sorry, this entry is only available in 日本語.

fukushima | Blog | 2009/12/04

Virtual gift experiment results

The primary revenue streams of social apps are virtual good micro transactions and advertisments. Basically users can play games for free but there are some paid items. If users want to get them, then they have to pay for them. That’s how social apps make profits.
This is an important theme so there are many large summit and news sites which are specialised in virtual goods.
http://www.virtualgoodsnews.com/
http://www.vgsummit.com/2009/
Some virtual goods are called “virtual gifts” which is a simple service where you can send pictures to friends. There are lots of people paying to just send pictures to other friends.

Facebook also offers virtual gifts and it is an important part of their source of revenue.
Facebook is testing virtual gifts.

Istpika has tested virtual gifts for the last month. Here is our report.
True Happy Aquarium in fishville Island Paradise

In accordance with the increase of the number of fish apps such as HappyAquarium on Facebook, we made a virtual gift app which you can send pictures of fish with.
Because it was made with GiftCreator (well-known on Facebook as you can make gift apps simply and quickly with), it was not exactly developed by Istpika .
The result is, it’s already got 178,074 MAU since the start on 02/Nov.

The most popular fish is this one.

Not sure why. I don’t think this fish is anything special.

The title of this fish is “modestly”. Senders can send it casually and they might have sent it “modestly”. This could have been the reason why this fish was the most popular. We titled the fish using adverbs at first . We thought it would sound poetic and cool.
Other titles we used are “fluently” and “selfishly”…
… might have been a bit too much…

Do users use this app considering the gift names?
With gift apps, are titles so important as well as pictures? Do senders care the meaning of the titles when they send them?
To verify the influence of the titles, we made an experiment.

We changed the titles of some of the fish from “poetic message” to “direct message”.

The result was:

There are apparent changes.
It looks like users declared their love or comfirmed they were alive or dead to each other.

The users use social apps casually so it seems like they prefer simple and direct message not significant message you have to think about what the senders really trying to say (and maybe they want humour in their messages!?)

We expect that not only virtual games but also virtual gifts will be spread out in the world from now and we’ve been focussing on them. In social games, whether you send a cow or an energy pack, it’s all the one similar gifting function. To get more users, we keep trying to gain know-how.

fukushima | Blog | 2009/11/30

Adverse Selection

We thought this was a great article.

Adverse Selection

Due to differences in the information that buyers and sellers have, the efficient allocation of resources to the buy and sell market mechanism can be put out of kilter. And quality products can disappear from the market. A famous example of this is illustrated by the economist George Akerlof. He explains that care sale yards know best when it comes to whether or not a car has been in an accident or whether or not it will be have one. All the buyer has is the seller’s word, this is the assymetry of information. In this case the buyer will only purchase the vehicle for a lower price than the average between the cost of one thats been in an accident and one that hasn’t. The result is damaged vehicles are sold for more and quality vehicles are taken off the market by their owners. Due to the assymetry of information the used car market becomes flooded with damaged vehicles and quality vehicles decline and adverse selections are made.

Akerlof pointed out that quality assurances and brand chains or franchises peddled by car dealers rectify the information assymetry and they are giving back confidence to the customer. newsweek日本版１１７５号より

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection

We can apply this to iPhone apps that don’t stand out or sell well.
Price wars and apps that are just quick attempts at a few $$ are the norm and it’s difficult for high quality apps to get to the higher positions on the apple Top lists.
Customers rely heavily on those lists. There are various review sites around but their reliability is questionable. Potential buys look at those Top lists and purchase those apps because their on the list and therefor must be good. Review sites use affiliate programs and advertising to gain popularity and so of course review those apps that are in the Top lists or those that will almost definitely make it.
The point being, customers are getting a lot of information about products with questionable reputations.
You could call this, asymmetry of information.

.. I’m sure we’ve all experienced this.
Even though certain products are in the top lists, they live up to their net-wide reviews.

To combat this, we could consider quality assurance.
To examine quality, we first need to establish the “fairness” and “accuracy” ranges.

… As I was considering this, I realised there was such a system already in Facebook.
Living Social
Living Social appeared around spring and in 1 month went to 1,000,000 monthly active users. They cover not only iPhone apps, but cd’s, books and just about everything. It’s easy to operate, you can put it in your Facebook profile and people very quickly began categorising their collections. On a large social network, sharing this kind of info between friends is easy so it went viral very quickly.

living social
At TokyoCamp we sat next to http://www.rainbowapps.com/http://www.rainbowapps.com/. An iPhone dev co.
On their site you can add followers who you find trustworthy information-wise. If you have similar interests, they can become a valuable source.
You could equate it to real friends who always give you great info.

.. can we apply the same theory to social app design ..
No, this is the BASIS of social app design??

Social Appli ideas are in fimilar places maybe.
In society.

fukushima | Blog | 2009/11/29

Recent popular game releases on Facebook

Lots of attractive game apps have been coming out these days so we can’t really keep up or analyze all of the new ones but I will attempt to list up.

Apps made by major companies.

Poker Rivals by PlayFish
http://www.facebook.com/pokerrivals?ref=ts
501MAU (released only yesterday. It seems like it’ll get 1,000,000MAU tomorrow!)

Is this Playfish’s revenge for the success of RestaurantCity against Zynga!?

Poker Rivals is PlayFish’s version of Zynga’s hit, “Texas Hold ‘Em Poker” .
Texas Hold ‘Em Poker has been expanding and now with it’s tournaments the winners have a chance to win an XBOX 360 Elite.
On the other hand, Poker Rivals has a simple system. One of the features is it’s communication methods during play. With Texas Hold ‘Em Poker , you can have a chat with other players but with Poker Rivals , you can express your feeling using animations which so you don’t have to worry about language barriers. It also should be good for bluffing while playing poker.

SuperPocus by Slide
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=137947854575&ref=ts
269,860MAU
269,860MAU

Slide hasn’t released any apps for a while. Slide was one of the major developers when Facebook first started.
SuperPocus is a PetSocial type app. Players keep pets in your room and you can change your clothes, buy furniture, visit your friends and you can also learn how to use magic or study something else. There are a number of features which make me feel immersed in the game. It’s high-quality and I’m into it!

Zoo World by RockYou!
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=167746316127
2,398,818MAU

Zoo World is their first app in a while and it is a zoo managing game. It hasn’t been completed yet but we’re waiting for the release with expectation as they are one of the major facebook developers.

Happy Pets By CrowdStar
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=127148832824
3,480,710MAU

CrowdStar is a fast-growing developer with their Happy Aquarium and Happy Pets is a pet version of Happy Aquarium. Players can have dogs and cats. The cats are absolutely adorable. The animation is realistic which makes me think what’s gonna happen if I don’t feed my pet?? Once you’ve started, you’ll feel like you have to take responsibility for its whole life.
CrowdStar hasn’t been in this arena long however they’ve grown by advertising and they are considered as a major developer.

Apps made by new developers
(“new” means “not up on high level)

Home Inn By FunTime /ShineZone
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=131728383362
1,151,426MAU

Players manage a little B&B style hotel as an owner. Players can decorate or enlarge the hotel. As they play the game, they’ll also learn real managemet in running a hotel.

CrazyOffice By rain in rain (China)
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=79391065682
118,419MAU

Players employ their friends. The work place is a factory that makes bycicles. It has a similar system to Farmville.

Treasure Madness by zSlide
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=29518083188
1,684,760MAU

Dig a hole and hunt for treasure. This is a hybrid game – players have to clear quite a few mini games while treasure hunting. It’s a common style of game in Japan, bit like MarioParty. This company used to have lots of Flash mini games. We’re into this game now.

Kick-off by Hive7.com
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=53073376315
136,682MAU

Players orgnise a soccer team with their friends and play in a tournament online. Playing with friends is very important and choose your best positions. I wan to focus on Facebook sport games that are click controlled. There are some other developers that have released soccer games.

BlingTown by Vojo World
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=173487213734
143,350MAU

Real time avatar chat with a player room and quest format to it. You start with no money and a clothing change. As you progress there are several levels where you get talked to. With lots of levels this looks like a good one, even though it’s not quite complete.
but looks like it’s not completed yet.

MedicalMayhem by Vojo World
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=104049797383
284,967MAU

Hospital managing game. its small dot art is fresh. It’s basically very similar to Farmville.

Summary

It’s concerning that major game companies monopolise the market of facebook apps, but lots of new developers have been on the rise. New developers’ strategies are making apps unique and interesting.
In other words, a differentiation should be made. Such as their individual strategies;

- Add their vision of the world and replace the designs to modify existing popular apps (ex; Animal farm -> aquarium).
- Mix several basic systems such as animal farm + mob, cultivation + quest, additional mini game collision , etc)

These two are the main strategies.
Systems which are completely new are rarely seen, probably the same as the other game industries.

While major developers have been releasing new games after another, new developers have been planning carefully and releasing high quality and different apps comparable to the ones made by major developers. Wonder how they’ll go wothout advetising, on other words, with viral marketing.
If it goes well, that’ll be the proof that there’s a place for venture developers to slot into in facebook app design.

Istpika will be watching with interest.

fukushima | Blog | 2009/11/25