We held a code jam in Atami.
I’m not sure how much I can write, but here goes.
I also praised the speakers who talked about Facebook.

Here is an article about social apps / facebook and what the ARPU (average revenue per user) us and how high it can go?

It comes from a famous VC’s blog from an American company, Lightspeed.
Interview with CEO of Serious Business

Friends For Sale a long running Facebook app which is now quite famous.
It currently sits on 4.8 M users. In the app you make pets of your friends, buy and sell them and make cash. I have liked this since I found it. You can make your pets kiss other friends, clean toilets and other things. With almost no graphics, this is a real refelection of what a social app is.

The blog data

- 1M DAU
- Target – Western society 25 – 30
- Sales – USA / France / Vietnam take top positions

90% of revenue comes from virtual goods.
Rather than offers, they’re working to get 100% of revenue from virtual goods.
They’re ARPU is low, but volume means revenue is there.
Paying users = 1%, when they calculate it out 1 DAU = $0.45 (p/month).

They plan to add more titles and move into other social networks to bring up their ARPU.
Their rivals are Zynga and Playfish and the next title they release will be Flash based.

These figures are not accurate but we can hypothesize they make US $450,000 a month.
The actual figures may be a third of that but even so, you can see they make a lot of cash from this title.

TechCrunch also has written about this app.
Lightspeed funding turns facebook apps into Serious Business
Guess which Facebook app is making 1M a month
This confirms that social apps are really starting to get some attention.

Facebook social apps are hard work business-wise, so we talked about it at our code jam. The people that participated in this code jam are the top players in Japan, no mistake. But when I see this news Without really understanding social apps a lot of players have entered the field (I can’t say who though). I feel the same.. So I get the feeling that the level of quality will take a nosedive and titles will become a kind of attraction, this worries me.

For example this article from the other week.
Do you play social games alone? By yourself?

If your playing by yourself it’s not social right!?

Social games are where you play with friends and that’s what’s interesting! I’d recommend they give that aspect a little more attention.