Does Facebook Consider Social Games to be "Trivial" and Why?
"Facebook itself fully understood the pain the redesign would cause third parties. It consciously made painful-to-app changes, like pushing apps off of user profile pages and onto a sub-tab called “Boxes” that users have had a hard time finding. The changes, it believes, reward the most meaningful apps while punishing the trivial ones."If you agree with Eric, and I do, then here's the question: does Facebook consider social games to be trivial?- Eric Eldon, Venturebeat
As Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, reminded app developers at the most recent SNAP Summit: the app platform is not a revenue center for Facebook. If we don't align ourselves with Facebook's interests, then it's reasonable to expect more punitive measures.
If social games are trivial or even counterproductive to Facebook's goals, then as a group we should be looking to become independent of Facebook ASAP. Perhaps, this is why Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN, believes the future of social gaming lies off of social networks (@ VG Summit).
Here's the problem that social games present to Facebook. For Facebook, the most important thing is the social graph, particularly, an ACCURATE representation of the social graph. For an accuracy, the social graph requires you to only "friend" people with whom you're actually friends. Many games, such as Mob Wars (and its many clones that incentize invites) passively encourage Facebook users to befriend strangers as a consequence of gameplay. Check out the forums on Friends For Sale, Zombies, or Mob Wars and counts the thousands and thousands of friend requests. Anecdotally, these "friends" do not become real friends or even acquaintances as some wish to assert.
Fake friends are a serious dent in Facebook's goal of an accurate social graph. They can attempt to algorithmly address this problem, and I'm sure they do, but I suspect it's easier to remove the problem at its root.
I'd say the fake friend problem is at the core of Facebook's apparent hate of trivial apps. It's a reason why a company would try and suppress features that their userbase clearly enjoy, an action that otherwise makes little sense. I think it's also the primary reason that Facebook created a policy against incentivized invites, rather than their argument that it hurt user experience.
So as game developers if we want to avoid being "trivial" and thus the wrath of Facebook in the future, we should be avoid incentize fake friending.
Zynga has addressed the fake friend problem in their Texas Holdem Poker game, by adding a meta-friend layer called Poker Buddies, where people can friend with whom they enjoy playing poker but do not want to Facebook friend. I'd encourage other developers to take similar measures, if they haven't already, so we don't risk angering the beast.
6 comments:
Ever since the platform launched, all you read about on the tech blogs are how the apps are devoid of any "value" or "utility" and how all of the apps are just "Silly" and "pointless."
I think it's a shame that people are so quick to dismiss the value of games and I think the changes made in the profile design suck.
SGN is doing the right things by freeing themselves of Facebook and moving across other platforms.
Rather than letting the free markets of the masses decide what they want to do on Facebook, Facebook is strongly pushing people towards using Facebook how they want it to be used. That's fine, but I think they're losing out on big revenue opportunities by doing things like taking 1+ year with no decision on a fb:payments system for developers, etc. So while the idealized goal of having a "perfect social graph" is enviable, I think the reality is that people LOVE playing games on social networks and doing seemingly pointless things with their time. Let them do it.
Boris, I totally agree. I think Facebook's decision to suppress trivial apps is going to allow competitors to rise up and take market share.
I never really understood this argument. Friendships develop over a central social object...be it the workplace, sports, scrapbooking, a common enemy, photography, etc. Why is gaming any different?
A side note, when games build in mechanisms to facilitate dialog (i.e. PackRat's Talk Smack, etc.) It makes it easier to convert those gaming friendships into more "real" ones.
I think there's some truth to that. However, I think Facebook's ideology takes a back seat to the idea of making Facebook profitable.
Here is what I mean:
The new Facebook is very much focused on friend feeds. Why?
The "social ads" which Facebook has been pushing are the company's most valuable advertising product. How do they work? They detect your brand interactions on Facebook, then push that messaging to your friends via the news feeds and activity streams. These social ads -- in essence, leveraging the unwitting "endorsement" of your friends -- are displayed in the one place on Facebook where Facebook as your complete, undivided attention.
The true purpose of the new Facebook, as far as I can see, has little to do with the social graph or culling third-party applications that Facebook deems pointless. It has everything to do with driving more attention to the news feeds which, in turn, increases the value of Facebook's social ads.
If you want to align yourself with Facebook's interests, that would be a key element to focus on.
Chris, I like your analysis. The question is how can games improve the quality of the feed. I don't know if it's true for anyone else, but I rarely see app-related items in my feed anymore despite that I explicitly allow them in my permissions. I still get tons of notifications, though. I suspect Facebook doesn't things trivial apps add value to their feed.
Mike, agreed that friendships develop over shared experiences. I think that's the value of Facebook groups, to meet like-minded people. Groups satisfy that need without encouraging fake friending.
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