Many might remember the big headline a couple of weeks ago wherein Zynga Games announced that they might be splitting off from Facebook due to the change in policies of the social networking site.
It was not surprising that about a week after that, Facebook and Zynga have been able to find an agreement that convinced the app developer to stay with the social network. It is generally believed that if the split up did happen, Facebook will remain successful and Zynga would be on the losing end of the deal, but it was still in the best interest of both companies to stay together.
Anyway, Zynga’s presence, as well as the presence of so many game applications on Facebook, is an important factor that has led to the success of the social networking site. As one might expect the apps that are played on Facebook are free to play, and the only way for developers to earn is through micro transactions –in order to encourage users to buy, games are made to be very rewarding to play and of course, addictive. The pickup, play and wait formula has found many users logging in, playing their turn then waiting for a couple of hours to be able to play again.
It was a fantastic formula. Users would play games, chat with friends, then play again –and the fact that friends in their network were also playing was a great plus. And since people had to compete with friends, many felt the pressure to start buying premium items in-game in order to stay on top or catch up.
With this, Facebook’s many game applications manage to flourish and succeed despite the fact that there are so many other games that are available on the PC, on smart phones and of course, on consoles. Thanks to these game apps, Facebook is also the website with the largest amount of usage time.
Tags: Apps, Facebook, Social-networking, zynga