Friends for Sale is one of the most known application in FB (Facebook) yet the world known game has weakness.

The FFS is not that capable of providing it’s user more entertainment. Yes, it amuse perhaps when you just buy a pet and make him/her work for you but the thing is, it is not enough.

Another thing which I notice is that you will be bored of buying and selling pets, earning money when your pet is bought and increasing your value. Some recommendation are ought to take to improve the named application.

For those who are questioning my words it is just an observation.

Dear everyone,

Friends For Sale ! is one of the most used applications in facebook. This application is about buying and selling your friends to gain money and buy a higher value friend. Actually I didn’t like this application because it changes the  real value of friendship into a monetary value and you make them work to get money. On the other hand it uses the word “PET” when you purchase a friend, so friends are now pets to you. I think they should change its name to “Friends As Slaves“.

Best regards

A good profile of Facebook social game developer “Serious Business” by VentureBeat

Hey there Serious Gamers,

Thanks for dropping by to check out our blog. The community team at Serious Business knows the stars of our games are the players and we thought you deserved a peek into what we are up to.

Recently we had a Halloween Contest in Friends For Sale. Some of the images were pretty creepy and it was difficult to select the best art from the flood of entries we received. Tom took the lead in reviewing your submissions, but he seems to have suffered no lasting effects. Please click here to see the Halloween Contest results: Winners

Some people in the office dressed up for our Halloween celebration. The top banana was our company mascot McLovin.

Friends For Sale is looking for more moderators. Please hit up Terri if you are interested in sharing your in-game expertise with others.

The Hierarchy is our latest game and I play it daily. I enjoy the art, the Spy vs Spy challenges against other players and collecting gear from drops. Our dev team is adding more content on a regular basis to enrich your gaming experience. They play The Hierarchy too.

Till next time…

David

..
หลังๆ นี้ ลอคอินเข้าเฟซบุ๊กมาทีไร ก็จะพบแต่อัพเดท FFS เต็ม wall ไปหมด โอ๋ไม่แน่ใจเหมือนกัน ว่าเราได้ประโยชน์โภชน์ผลอันใดจากเกมส์นี้ รู้แต่ว่า มันทำให้เกิดการแอดเพื่อนใหม่ๆ เกิดปฏิสัมพันธ์ระหว่างผู้ใช้ FB อย่างพรึ่บพรั่ง อยากรู้จนตัวสั่นว่า ไอ้คนคิดเกมส์นี้มันคิดขึ้นมาได้ยังไง.. แม่งเจ๋ง
..

[บ่ายต้นๆ ระหว่างชั่วโมงทำงาน],
มือถือดังโชว์เบอร์ไม่ทราบชื่อ โอ๋กดรับสาย “สวัสดีค่ะ”
โทรมาเวลางาน (ย้ำ.. เวลางาน) รับสายเสียงสุภาพหน่อย

“ขอสายคุณโอ๋ครับ” น้ำเสียงนั้นงงๆ นิดหน่อย
“ค่ะ โอ๋พูดสาย”
“โอ๋ ณัฏฐวรรณ เหรอครับ”
“ค่ะ” แหม๋ง.. พูดชื่อจริงด้วย
น้ำเสียงโอ๋สุภาพขึ้นอีกทบเท่าทวีคูณ

“เฮ้ย.. โอ๋” อีกฝ่ายเปลี่ยนน้ำเสียงทันที
“ผมเอง หลุยส์(นามสมมติ)”

อะโธ่.. นึกว่าใคร เอ๊ะแล้วไหงเบอร์ไม่ใช่
ช่างมันโอ๋จำเสียงได้แระ ขี้เมาทีมชาตินี่เอง

“น้าหลุยส์ว่าไง” โอ๋เปลี่ยนโหมดเสียงทันควัน
“ผมถามไรหน่อยดิ”
“อืม ว่ามา?”

“คือ.. ” น้ำเสียงคุณน้าหลุยส์(นามสมมติ)แอบลังเล
ก่อนค่อยๆ คายคำถามออกมา..

“ผมอยากล็อคตัวเอง
เข้ากับคนที่เค้าซื้อผมมาน่ะ ทำไมมันทำไม่ได้วะ”

“หือ.. ล็อคอะไร” โอ๋งง
“ในเกมส์อ้ะ ไอ้เฟรนด์ฟอร์เซลน่ะ”

โอ๋หัวเราะก๊าก “แล้วโทรมาเพื่อถามสิ่งนี้เนี่ยนะ” ฮา..
“เออ.. แม่งทำไมล็อคไม่ได้วะ
มันบอกยูนี้ดโทค่งโทเค่นเชี่ย(ขออภัย)ไร”

“ตังไม่พออะดิ” โอ๋สันนิษฐาน
ก่อนอรรถาธิบายไปเท่าที่พอทราบ

“เฮ้ยไรวะ” น้าหลุยส์(นามสมมติ)โวยวาย
“นี่กูอยากล็อคตัวเองกับเค้าต้องเสียตังด้วยเหรอ”

“อ่าว.. แหม” โอ๋หัวเราะ
“จะผูกมัดใคร ก็ต้องลงทุนหน่อย
เหมือนน้าหลุยส์ไปขอลูกสาวชาวบ้าน
ก็ต้องเอาสินสอดไปกอง”

“เฮ้ย.. แต่ผมเป็นสัตว์เลี้ยง-กูเป็นเพทของเค้านะ
กูต้องจ่ายตังด้วยเหรอ”

“ฮ่าฮ่า แล้วใหญ่เลยน้าหลุยส์(นามสมมติ)
เท่ากับจ่ายตังซื้อปลอกคอมารัดตัวเอง”

“ไรว้า.. ” น้าหลุยส์(นามสมมติ) บ่นพึม
“เออๆ ขอบคุณมากจ๊ะโอ๋ แค่นี้แหละ”
ยินดีรับใช้ค่ะ..  ^ ^
..

เรื่องเล่าแก้ง่วงยามบ่ายค่ะ
..

เกี่ยวกับภาพประกอบ:
ต้องบอกมั้ยเนี่ย ว่าเอามาจากเวบ facebook.com [ฮา]

Friends For Sale Mania!

Almost all my friends in facebook use Friends For Sale, I use Friends For Sale, and if you know what’s Friends For Sale or have heard about it, you probably use it too.

First off, What is Friends For Sale?

Its a facebook application that allows you to buy friends and random people at a given value. After owning them (dubbed as PETS), you can get them to do “work” to other people. You start with some cash and from there you go on a Human-shopping spree. Sounds simple yea?…boring?

But that doesn’t explain why so many people use it. People even spend money on it, i mean real money, to get “cash”, so they can buy more “pets”.

As ridiculous as it may sound, theres more to it than just buying people. As you buy more pets and they are bought from you, you get profit, more money, more pets. On the other hand, as people buy you, your value goes up. Right now i cost about $40,000,000! On top of that, im $150,000,000 richer! Sounds cool doesnt it? Well thats the whole point. Its about your status, how many pets you own, and how rich you are to own pets that others treasure.

Now for the frequent FFS users, here are a few tips to increase your value and cash..

• Make sure your profile pic stands out. Sometimes a pic with high contrast should do the trick. If not you can always show off that ripped body of yours, with the 6-pack abs and the curvy shape of that foxy body.
• Start buying friends that know alot of people and are constant users of FFS. This will make sure that you get your money back (with profit).
• Make friends in FFS. Comment on other FFS profiles with compliments or simply just ask them straight out to buy you and you would buy them.
• Always go for the cheap pets. The more pets you have, the better are your chances of gaining profit.

Yes its a Battle! Facebook being a social network, alot of users have family, friends, and people that they like, dislike, and like very much. If I buy your Girlfriend in FFS, you better have enough money to buy her back. Otherwise, she belongs to me!

After realizing that i’m the only one in the house who’s not doing anything at all (since my mean little sister pointedly told me), i figured i shoud really start looking for something sensible to do.

Well i didn’t know pigging out  can’t be considered “doing something”. Standing up and goind down the staircase to get to the fridge still requires a lot of energy. As a matter of fact i even do brisk walking  on my way to the kitchen, i heard it’s the best way to lose weight.

And who is she to tell me i’m not doing anything at all? When in fact i’m being productive here over the net.

Here’s a list of some of my productive activities in the internet:

• Signing up on a new networking group everyday
• buying those who are  poor  in Friends for Sale so they can earn some coins from the transaction and at the same time raise their value as a pet (hopefully it adds to the self-esteem?)
• updating my status in facebook,meebo,and ym so people know what i am up to as of the moment
• thinking about ways to increase this site’s traffic
• and helping out the dogs find their lost kids buy supporting charities online!

How productive can a bum get?

]]> http://atsalakotoi.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/friends-for-sale-%cf%80%cf%8e%cf%82-%cf%84%ce%bf-%ce%b3%ce%bd%cf%89%cf%83%cf%84%cf%8c-%cf%83%ce%b5-%cf%8c%ce%bb%ce%bf%cf%85%cf%82-%ce%bc%ce%b1%cf%82-%cf%80%ce%b1%ce%b9%cf%87%ce%bd%ce%af%ce%b4%ce%b9/ Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:31:51 +0000 iRonK@t http://atsalakotoi.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/friends-for-sale-%cf%80%cf%8e%cf%82-%cf%84%ce%bf-%ce%b3%ce%bd%cf%89%cf%83%cf%84%cf%8c-%cf%83%ce%b5-%cf%8c%ce%bb%ce%bf%cf%85%cf%82-%ce%bc%ce%b1%cf%82-%cf%80%ce%b1%ce%b9%cf%87%ce%bd%ce%af%ce%b4%ce%b9/ http://cerebralinsights.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/friends-for-sale/ Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:34:05 +0000 elleica http://cerebralinsights.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/friends-for-sale/ http://friendsforsale.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/friends-for-sale/ Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:48:56 +0000 conradsanetwork http://friendsforsale.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/friends-for-sale/

Some help from the ffs forum:
Q: How can I make myself worth more money?
A: Every time someone buys you as a pet your value increases, earning you more money in the “Value” category. The more people buy you, the higher your value!

Q: How do I earn cash on Friends For Sale?
A: When you buy a pet and then later sell that pet you make a profit. When you buy a pet their value increases. When you sell them, the sale price is their increased value. The more pets you buy and sell the more money you make. Simple! You can also earn money by clicking on Bonus Money at the top of your profile and exploring the offers and bonus shopping options.

Q: A total stranger just bought me. What do I do?
A: You should feel honored when someone buys you! When people buy you, your value goes up and when you buy people and then sell them you make money, too. The more you play, the more money you make!

Q: But what if I only want my friends to buy me?
A: If you set your Facebook privacy settings in the Search category to “Friends Only,” this will make you appear as a “?” question mark to players who are not your friend.

Q: Can I customize my Friends For Sale profile?
A: If you click on your username you will be taken to your Friends For Sale profile. In the About Me section there is a link “edit description” that allows you to say a little some-thing about yourself or even add some “flare” to your profile.

Pls. look at ffs link and add me to your wishlist that I could do the same for you! I really love red or black roses in the ffs gifts if you really want to grab my attention…

link to my page:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=680856966

Impressive was the crowd producer Charles Hudson amassed for the 2nd annual Social Gaming Summit.  500 came from near and very far…game developers, game show producers, VCs…from Vancouver, Australia, Argentina.  There were moments of surprising candor, mass clicking, ooohs, ahas, gasps, laughs and booming applause.  The networking was stellar, and as the crowd drifted off to the Richter Scales after-party with super schwag in hand (Mario mushrooms, sporty tees), the twitter stream was still sparkling at #sgs09.  So if you’re seeking cha-ching, here are some of the gems:

I.  Industry Insights with Justin Smith, InsideFacebook.com, InsideSocialGames.com, slides: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/06/23/slides-from-presentation-at-social-gaming-summit/

Facebook
FB 200mm mau, 70% of FB growth outside US, US growing 5-10%:  NA 81mm (US 60mm), Europe 77mm, Asia 28mm, SA 19mm, Africa 5mm.  FB is getting older, half of new users are 35y+, more than half of US gamers are 25y+, women outnumber men.  

Top Games as of June 2, popular themes – flirting, charity, virtual worlds, cards, sports, trivia, pets, role-playing, first person shooter
- Texas Hold Em Poker – Zynga – 12mm mau
- Mafia Wars – Zynga – 11mm mau
- Pet Society – Playfish – 11mm mau
- Farm Town – SlashKey – 7mm mau
- YoVille – Zynga – 7mm mau 
- MindJolt – Zynga – 6mm mau
- Pass a Drink – SocialReach – 6mm mau
- Lil Green Patch – Green Patch – 5mm mau
- Bumper Sticker – LinkedIn – 5mm mau
- Restaurant City – Playfish – 4mm mau 
- Chain Rxn – Zwigglers – 4mm mau
- Geo Challenge – Playfish – 3.5mm mau
- Bejeweled Blitz – Pop Cap Games – 3mm+
- Know-It-All-Trivia – CrowdStar – 3mm+
- Word Challenge – Playfish – 3mm+
- Who Has the Biggest Brain – Playfish – 3mm+
- Vampire Wars – Zynga – 2.7mm
- Friends For Sale – Serious Business – 2.6mm 

In 2 years, there are 14,000+ games:
- 3 games with 10mm mau
- 30 games with 1mm mau
- 100 games with 100,000 mau
- 300 games with 10,000 mau
- 1,000+ games with 1,000 mau

Little monetization, rules, infrastructure, powerful viral channels:  invites, notifications, newsfeed – liberal approach led to spam, fatigue.   

FB Connect has been the biggest development in the last 6 months for the social app ecosystem, API allows developers to use social graph data elsewhere (identity, social context, sharing, publishing in a frictionless way, no more log-in), lets you move social graph to multi-device gaming, play the same game with friends across devices, FB Connect making mobile social – FB Connect, iPhone, Xbox, DSi.  

MySpace
Best kept secret, has as many users as FB (WW 125mm, US 60mm) with twice the ARPUs.  Average revenue per user for top games are $1-$2/month, FB $.30-$.40, MS $.60-$.70.  Opened as a gaming platform a year later than FB, virtual currency coming, FB games are porting over to MS, less crowded, 125mm mau, good viral channels, although more conservative than FB, doesn’t share active player metrics.

hi5
#1 social network in 30 countries, big in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, recently restructured entire company around games.  Now a social entertainment network with games, virtual currency, and aspirational IDs.  Innovative partnerships with payment companies, 400 games focus on transactions.

etc
- 3P XPlatform SDKs – Come2Play, J2Play, OpenFeint, ScoreLoop, Gameyola
- Casual/Flash portals (Cafe.com, Kongregate, Pogo, Bigpoint, AddictingGames)
- Web portals – igoogle, MyYahoo – jury is out whether address bookcontacts =friends to play games with, 10mm mau, Y! contacts diff than connections
- Twitter has RPGs Spymaster, 140Mafia, early games:  Fast140, TweetQuiz, very different platform, games feel more like spam.  Following people is very different than friending on social networks.  Greater role will be in integration with consoles (Xbox)

Monetization
More than half of revenue comes from user payments, the rest from offers, sponsored items, ads.  Offers can be 60-70% effective.  
CPA based offers – Offerpal, Super Rewards, Peanut Labs, Ad Parlor, Gambit, Sometrics, sponsored items – advertiser pays for distribution ($300 greenbucks for every $12 spent), direct payments increasing share of revenue
Web – socialgold, spare change, FB credits, hi5 coins
Mobile – Zong, Boku
Virtual economy optimization – economic management, retain reporting, many new solutions, payment challenges – offers, credit cards, shopping carts, mobile, geo/age limitations, many new solutions 
Freemium dominates, free to paid conversion rates are lower in social games (.5-1.5%) than MMORPGs.  

Trends
Free to play games on social networks, crowded monetization ecosystems, social networks FB MS getting involved, optimizing for monetization earlier, new games bridging social and mobile.  Continued focus on engagement, retention, monetization, gaming is a $50B industry, social games just a small percentage, industry only two years old.  

II.  Jeremey Liew, Lightspeed Venture Partners
with Zynga, Playdom, Playfish

On Cloning
As three of the fastest growing social games developers took the stage, all eyes were on Marc Pincus, CEO, Zynga and John Pleasants, CEO, Playdom considering the hit Zynga put out on Playdom for cloning Mafia Wars with Mobsters.  But Pincus was extremely chummy with Pleasants, smiling and whispering in his ear, even laughing at Zynga’s own cloning strategy (FarmVille knocking off SlashKey’s Farm Town, Mafia Wars knocking off Maestri’s Mob Wars.)  Of course, he was being social, that’s what this is all about.  The courts will decide whether cloning is infringement, but meanwhile copycat games, fair or not, are the way many speed to market.  (for more, read Patrick Hoge, SF Business Times http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/07/13/story7.html?surround=etf&b=1247457600^1858291) 

On Hit Portfolios
Facebook has created an environment where a newcomer can create a hit out of the blue, Farm Town shot to #1 with 4mm daily active users. Cross-promotion and installed base keeps marketing costs down but are not the advantage viral referral is, but viral is more than just invites which can be perceived as spam. Engagement and quality drive acquisition. Console is a mature industry where its a win-lose for every new entrant, but with social games, every new entrant expands the market, draws in new players, its a win-win, all boats rise.  Pleasants, former EA COO, and new kid on the block shared insights.  Games traditionally were always sold to the 25y male hard core gamer with story arc, competition, achievement, rewards, showing off, being prideful, fear of losing, frustration, anger, gaining over someone else, leveling, and scarcity of items fueling the game.  Traiditionally, hits drive category growth.  But social games are not as much about IP as they are about the way the game interacts, must nail viral, social mechanics rather than just the game mechanics.  And since web is the game platform, you get more swings at the plate.  Change games on a weekly basis to tweek the customer experience.  Mitigate risk to drive a hit portfolio.  In packaged games, distribution can make or break a game, and its costly.  iPhone is similar, only so many can fit on the shelf, if you’re not charting in the top 25, you’re not there.  But social games come from your friends, not limited to a single place, levels the playing field.  (Pincus suggested forming a consortium of social game developers to approach Apple, Palm for an open social gaming platform on mobile).  Digital distribution is a huge factor in creating a mass market, look at the success of WOW, coop mmorpg (CampFu.com), portal distribution, mobile with iPhone and Android, where you can quickly deploy to multiple countries.

On Virtual Goods
The white knight on the panel was Sebastien de Halleux, CEO, Playfish, with his Belgian demeanor and poetic vision.  Capture your audience’s imagination, let them deeply engage with content, and play together.  So inspiring, there wasn’t a person I spoke with after the talk who wasn’t in that moment checking out Restaurant City on their computer, or wanting to.  In the first 5 weeks of launch, Restaurant City reached 5mm users with no cross-promotion.  At Playfish, the core metric is fun, they know they have a winner when employees can’t stop playing.  They design games as objects of social interaction so users will be motivated to invite friends to play, perceive value to investing in game over time.  Quality (surround sound, fantastic graphics, immersive experience) shows players the game will pesist, worth the investment of time and money to build social capital.  For Restaurant City, lovingly referred to as RC, players invite friends to help run the restaurant and are motivated to dress avatar, spend on an attractive storefront, soundtrack , etc.  Games like RC transform FB into a Second Life. And real-life behavior is echoed in these virtual worlds.  Around the holidays, Pet Society sold 20 million Xmas trees at $2 each.  When players were asked why, they responded that in real life only a handful will see my real Xmas tree, but everyone can see my virtual one, you can touch more people online with one action and its a way to keep the plates spinning…. Connection with the audience is key to dynamic game design….Playdom sold $100,000 pink VWs on Sorority Life in 2 days simply by listening to audience chatter on what they wanted to buy….The disconnection in our real lives fuels the economy for gift giving of virtual goods.  Pleasants – I may not have time to sit down for a game of Connect Four with my kids but I can make a move in an online game, relate better to kids through shared gaming experience. ….if you’re going to hang out online with friends you never see, you’ll pay to look good.  And with scarcity of those goods, there is greater value.

On Real ID
At Zynga, likens the social network context to a cocktail party and all your friends are there.  The 3 pillars to a successful game long term are real friends, self-expression, and social capital (invest in game over time, own something of value).  YoVille has 10,000 items for sale.  Can use for entertainment or networking.  Social gaming can crossover to cultural phenomenon when half of internet is doing it.  Must feel real and relevant. Dynamic and deep way to communicate and interact, do something new and and in different ways.  Friends will fatigue on feeds, need a new story, new things you can do with your friends, the game is a playground for personality, more than just tricking out with avatars….There are 300,000 peak concurrent users playing poker, 75% of the time a friend is playing at the same time….Playfish limits play to real friends 18y+, skews 18-54y.  The emotional value of playing with friends is significantly higher than with strangers, so is the engagement, you build social capital to impress real friends, games are not a you vs. them but rather with the spectrum of emotions, love, friendship, pride, maximize these emotions with real life connections, like a boardgame, you’ll remember the good time you had not so much the moves to win.

On Investment
Analysis of metrics and targets are key before throwing promotional muscle behind game.  Zynga promotes heavily at launch to accelerate into market. Invested $2mm to develop Guild of Heroes only to kill it at 10,000 players, didn’t have the right metrics to launch.  That said, niche audiences are desirable even if smaller like the 2mm on Playfish’s Minigolf, when 11mm is considered a hit.

On The Audience
There is a gender split 18-34y, most never played video games, enjoying the social experience with friends (fans reports being addicted to beating family members at Biggest Brain), moves it to the broader consumer realm, consider themselves more social than gamers, watch the Twitter stream, they don’t use the same language as gamers.

On The Companies

Zynga – started 2/07 with 10 – now have 300 full time employees plus 50 contractors, hiring, have 90 open recs, based in Potrero Hill SF with backend, net ops and data wh in Los Gatos.  4 studios: Mobile, Casual, MMO, Virtual Goods, 9-10 product groups.  Pincus hope is that soon half the internet will be playing a social game everyday.

Playdom – started 16 months ago – 65 employees, 3 founders in their 20s, still with company focused on operations, 12 MS games, 5 FB games, 1 iPhone game, run lean and mean with 45 on game production, 20 on the business side.

Playfish – 100 employees across 4 creative studios – London, Beijing, Artic Circle(Tromso, Norway), SF (5), produced 7 games in 18 months, iPhone and consoles as access devices to FB web platform, same app, scoring.. Quality more important than distribution.  Game is not a science, can’t be modeled, mix of creative and technical DNA, learn from one title to the next what’s working, freedom to build a fun product has a huge impact on the lives of the people inside the company.  With Biggest Brain, since 2007, weekly release, keep it simple, respond to the audience, not something you can do with a traditional game that’s in development over 5 years.  A social game is not a product that goes live, happening now is a paradigm shift from game as product to game as service, from day one you are building a long term relationship, there is a lot of interplay between developer and audience. 

III.  Michael Arrington, Tech Crunch with FB, MS, hi5, OPI 

MySpace
70mm US mau, 30mm active app users, working on a MS Connect, only serves to expand the market, it’s all greenspace right now

Facebook
Seeing more game activity than WOW, social graph + real ID is at the core of FB being a successful social game channel, the larger the audience, the more valuable the platform to the developer, lack of payment system doesn’t hurt FB ecosystem, developers are free to use any payment system they want, sees huge growth on the horizon in multi-device gaming thanks to FB Connect and the summer of smartphones, this is the year consoles will go social across platforms.

hi5
3P payment solution makes the platform valuable to developers so that games can be easily monetized abroad as well as in US.  hi5 aspirational IDs, some game play lends itself to avatars, wouldn’t want to whack a friend holding two babies.  Regarding messaging,very cautious, monitor CTR carefully, if low, dial back on messaging, focus on honing and targeting so messages are not rejected as spam, build once, port everywhere.

OPI
85mm on their two social networks, in China, gaming is bigger revenue than ads and search, social gaming is a $5B market in China, many games have Xmm concurrent users. (tweets:  did OPI guy just say 1B concurrent users on social nets in China, no he said 80mm).  Arrington catches it, “Really, because that’s like a substantial portion of the world’s population.”  OPI replied in good humor, “I meant 1mm concurrent users…let’s blame it on jetlag.”  Then everyone bolted for lunch.  When the video posts, watch for it.  Absolutely hilarious.  

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TechCrunch -  RSS is Dead, Long Live The Stream!

Friday, July 10, join the scene at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City as TechCrunch presents CrunchUp with Facebook, FriendFeed, Microsoft, Salesforce, Seesmic, Tweetmeme, and other thought leaders of the Real Time Stream.  Then head over to August Capital in Menlo Park for a way cool after-party, where hopefully there’ll be some Pong

Event details and tickets at:  http://realtime.eventbrite.com.  See ya there!

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IV.  Monetization-PayPal, Super Rewards, Zong, GMG

GMG Entertainment – from 10/1-11/15, feature printable PDF to show mom and dad whch retailers are selling the prepaid card the kids want (a tweeter asks is it legal to market virtual currency to minors), the prepaid economy taps into the billions spent on gift-giving and allowance

PayPal - launching PayPal developer platform and new API, sign up to become a PayPal platform insider, hear about the beta SDK and developer conference this fall at www.x.com, soon to be  offering 13-17y student accounts for parents, fraud chargeback rates average 5%, developers happy with 1-1.5%, PayPal concerned when it reaches .5%-1%, soon posting best practices for avoiding fraud on website

Super Rewards – player to player trading increases fraud 100x but not monetization, so don’t allowing trading or cashing out, paid offers is a great way to get players to try the game before starting to pay directly, one user spent $30,000 on 2 games, need a way to capture these outliers

Zong – RMTs a manageable problem
Much competition in the payments ecosystem, consolidation is inevitable 
(Audience Qs: unpack RMT acronym and true vs. friendly fraud)

V. Acquisition/Retention-Offerpal, WonderHill, RockYou, Tagged

RockYou
FB better retention, no one uninstalls an app because they are not visible, developers can always reengage, MS has greater churn, can lose 10-60% after install because apps are more visible, part of profile, player is more sensitive on MS because app is part of identity, MS less viral, aged up for these messages, need to juice invite path, adoption path, with incentivized virality (beware TOS spamming, devaluing currency with too many offers), conversion rates from FB/MS to destination sites are better than expected.  5-7% of daily returning users is good, discounting promos. FB redesign reduced spam not engagement, focus on building momentum with newsfeeds and notifications (if developer goes skiing, engagement dies off), gaining the FB system, newsfeed very powerful, but gets pushed down fast, need to reinvent viral path, daily/hourly incentives, alerts for retention depends on user behavior, bonus poker chips daily.  Key conversion rates are #monthly users that become daily users. Successful brands mix zero marketing spend viral strategy (word of mouth, cross-promotion, SEO) with paid advertising to acquire users.  Buy ads on FB, MS, RockYou, TV – justify the ad spend with LTV.  Virality with game mechanics – time retention events,  leveling up, treasure chests of randomized gifts, periodicity, novelty of awards to avoid boredom.  

WonderHill 
For branding/discoverability, vanity URLs, bookmarking, destination sites. Acquirers value companies with destination sites than those that live on social networks alone, they want something tangible to own. Look to where growth is occuring, MS was less crowded so WonderHill went there first, other great platforms include Friendster, hi5, Tagged, photolog, value proposition to apps, access to a lot of users, not much competition.  Monetize with microtransactions on free-to-play sites.  Stay tuned for more licensed IP on FB for customer acquisition.

Tagged
50-80mm actively engaged, closed platform, signs BD deals with developers to offer stability for a term, won’t be surprised by a change of TOS. The gold standard is when 50% login daily like Facebook, Tagged is at 25%, 10-50% is a good range to be in.

Offerpal
- Most monetizable demographic – US women, 34-50y!  
- capturing someone doesn’t always mean they monetize well
- 30-40% paying after biting on offers for RPGs on social networks
- look at niches like Christian Singles 
- 80% on Twitter have less than 10 followers (spam bots, perhaps?) 

VI.  Real Metrics – Friends For Sale, Lil Green Patch
- Slides:  https://files.getdropbox.com/u/1006370/Metrics.pdf
- Metrics are a force multiplier, but you need something to multiply, can’t replace a good product, creativity, art, design, or qualitative metrics (user sentiment, net promoter score, etc.)
- (life time value – user acquisition cost) x scale = profit
- user acquisition costs – virality, retention, cross-promotion, marketing
- lifetime value – retention, quality, flow, mechanics, theme, payments
- 3As of metrics – actionable, accessible, auditable
- actionable – build a framework for experimentation not vanity, emphasis on split testing and actionable insights
- accessible – on demand experimentation capabilities, timely, transparent and accessible reporting, separate metrics infrastructure as much as possible
- auditable – sanity check against other data sources: db, fb, google analytics
- the viral loop = visit (product quality, new user experience, social proof – friends, key metric – activiation rate- revenue), infection (invite flows, retention, call to actions, game mechanics, self expression, alocation tuning, key metric – infection rate), conversion (copywriting, persuasion psychology, demographic targeting, key metric – click through rate)
- virality discounts user acquisition costs potentially down to $0 
- user acquisition cost discount k = infection rate * conversion rate (summed across all channels) 
- decrease user acquisition cost to increase life time value
- infection rate – viral flows, calls to action, product quality, game mechanics, allocation tuning
- conversion rate – copywriting, persuasion mechanics/psychology, demographic testing
- viral channels – request, notifications, feed forms, email, profile box, share link, email, app tab 
- build a dashboard for experimentation that allows the study of sensitivity analyses, run tests on 1% re:  language of messaging, metrics can help with revenue, gain actionable insights on virtual goods behavior, on Green Patch stats show average spend $0-$2 for games with nearly 5000 users

VII.  Three Rings, Sparkplay Media, Challenge Games, Kongregate

Sparkplay Media and Three Rings willing to pay $30 for a qualified lead, LTV of a paying Puzzle Pirates customer is $150, but Three Rings not willing to pay it upfront.  Social network games are not MMORPGs, they are single player, asynch play, you don’t get to play your friends realtime, many games like RC use paper cutouts of friends, or force creation of false friends that corrupts the social graph (FB doesn’t let you play with others unless they are friends).  The more social a game, the more commitment required, the more you play, the more you play.  The more social capital (quality, status, fun), the more social games will become mainstream.  Kongregate is growing 8-10% month as a destination site, not splitting focus by going on FB but likes the idea of FB Connect.

Who’s Who in the Mix

At Breakfast – Jeremy Zorn, MyYearbook http://twitpic.com/871ls, Scott & Rachel Thomas, Alif Khalfan, Playdom  http://twitpic.com/8738e, Charles Yong, developerAnalytics, Chris Akhavan, RockYou http://twitpic.com/872f3, Dr John Banks, CCI Queensland, Caryl Shaw, EA/Maxis, Barbara North, Moblying http://twitpic.com/8721d, Greg Jagiello, IMVU, Woody Hartman, IGN http://twitpic.com/871a7

At Lunch – Kim Kaplan, Plenty of Fish, talked about:
- how in just 6 years, Plenty of Fish has grown to $350mm in revenue, with 16mm monthly uniques, traffic 4x that of Match.com, .15% CTRs
- online dating trends with 1 in 5 now meet their mate online
- and the importance of fresh campaigns every year, seeking out creative spends like exclusive sponsorship of music videos (e.g. Flo-Rida, Will.i.am, Akon Available), NYC/Boston subway billboard campaigns (remnant inventory high ROI, low cost)

Mingling – Anne-Marie Edwards, PlayFirst, Matt Golden, Blackberry Partners Fund (fabulous speaker at EconSM), Georg Alscher, DaoPay (major SGS sponsor), Olivier Delfosse, FremantleMedia (hopefully this means the Price is Right, American Idol brands are extending into social games), Tomio Geron, VentureWire , and Kim Vallee, blogger extraordinaire, possibly with the most comprehensive tweets of the event, and my tablemate, Tom Griffiths, hubdub.com http://twitpic.com/873hi

Other Coverage
Audio Interview of FB Gareth Davis
http://audioboo.fm/boos/32863
Venture Beat
http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/06/24/in-recession-social-gaming-comes-of-age/
Offerpal Blog
http://myofferpal.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/what-did-we-learn-at-the-social-gaming-summit/
 hi5 Blog
http://www.hi5networks.com/blog/2009/06/observations_from_the_social_g.html
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog
lsvp.wordpress.com
Gamasutra
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24169
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24192
GigaOm
http://gigaom.com/2009/06/23/fou-things-to-know-about-social-games-today/
Inside Social Games
http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/06/23/live-notes-from-panel-building-social-games-at-scale-at-social-gaming-summit-2009/
http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/06/23/live-notes-from-sgs09-expert-talks-on-viral-metrics-and-ip-rights/
Virtual World News
http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2009/06/social-gaming-virtual-goods-discussed-in-sf-summit.html
Jussi Laakkonen Blog
http://jussilaakkonen.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/coverage-of-social-gaming-summit-2009/
Crowdsourced Summary
www.slideshare.net/MayankDhingra/social-gaming-summit-2009

Buy and sell your friends as pets! You can make your pets poke, send gifts, or just show off for you. Make money as a shrewd pets investor or as a hot commodity! Friends for Sale is the bees knees!

Jealous? Maybe a little bit. Hot Momma is safe. I know her. Shes perfect for him. But this girl,… lets call her Positive Twist. I don’t know her. Cocky Sir can’t like her. I don’t know why I’m trying to control him. I know he still considers me his friend… but its been so long. He doesn’t have any classes with me… and toward the end of the year he stopped eating lunch with us. If he ever liked me, hes moved on. I just hope he still… remembers me. Not remembers, I know he does that. I just want our relationship to be loose but solid, not something that can be broken up by the 3 months of summer. Well, I’ll find out in a few weeks. Anyways, back to this girl. Positive Twist and I are having a buy war on a facebook application called Friends For Sale. I HAVE to win. This is how these things work. I WILL NOT loose. Not in a cyber battle. I’ve got expensive equipment, two computers, and a strong aversion to loosing. Cocky Sir won’t ever belong to me, no matter how slutty he makes me feel, but at least I can have him on facebook. At least on facebook. What an odd little child. I wonder if he knows the extent hes affected my life. I feel the same way about Clean Cat sometimes. People change my life and views so much, and they probably don’t even know. I wonder if I’ve ever done that to anyone. I know I did when I was little. Child Star and Key were practically my pets. They’d do whatever I said and they’d fight over me to a vicious extent. But I don’t think anyone relies on me that heavily anymore. There are some people who don’t go places with anyone but me. Don’t get me wrong, they have other friends, they just don’t see them outside of school. It makes me feel really special and I get jealous if they break away. Its awfully selfish of me really, but it sure happens a lot.

Acabo de agregar la aplicacion Friends for Sale de Facebook pero antes de esto yo ya habia sido vendido y comprado unas cuantas veces lo que incremento ligeramente mi valor y curiosamente mi precio exacto al momento de agregar la aplicacion resulto ser…

Otro dato curioso hacia mi persona al que le sumamos la correcion que hace google sobre mi nickname

Been looking at my Facebook notifications and saw that I was bought by several people.  Quite amused by the fact that I don’t even know some of these “buyers”.  Tried to buy some friends too but well, you just can’t “buy” a friend with money in real life do you?  It’ll be pretty sad if that happens to anyone isn’t it?

Today we announced a $4m investment in Serious Business. Their social game, Friends For Sale, has become a top ten app on Facebook since it launched in November. I am very excited about working with Siqi and Alex and the rest of the team.

While there are a lot of games on the social network platforms now, many have game mechanics that have been ported from another medium. I think Siqi and Alex have developed the first game dynamic that is native to social networks. As I’ve mentioned before, social games differ from merely multiplayer games in that social context has an impact on the game play and enjoyment. I believe that the Serious Business team has a deep understanding of how to create these social games, and we’ll see more such games coming from them in the future.

Venturebeat has a good description of the first game:

Here’s how it works. You join Friends For Sale and receive a starter war chest of several thousand dollars of the company’s virtual currency, as well as a valuation of how much you’re worth. Then you see a list of all your Facebook friends who have added the application, along with their selling price, and you can start buying them up. Price is determined like in any market, by bidders — so if you’re competing against others to buy a particular friend, you’ll have to keep raising your bid in order to maintain ownership.

When you sell a friend, you get to keep half the profit. The other half goes to the person getting bought. You can also make money by doing things like inviting more friends to the application. You earn $2,000 for every four hours that you’re logged in, and $1,000 for every friend you invite. And when somebody buys you, your value increases.

What’s the point of owning a friend, besides making virtual money on their eventual sale? Well, you can buy them gifts, or you can use them to “poke” other friends.

So really, this game is a mask for deeper social intentions. Let’s say you’re a high school student and you want to show a classmate that you have a romantic interest them — buy them and give them a gift on Friends For Sale. Or lets say you want to attract the interest of a prominent entrepreneur and angel investor like early Googler Georges Harik. Buy him, if you can afford it: He’s my most expensive Facebook friend, worth more than half a million dollars in the app’s virtual currency (pictured, above; thankfully, he’s already an investor in VentureBeat).

Other coverage is in Techcrunch, and Inside Facebook.

We had an unexpected break this Thursday. The lecture got cancelled (quite an anomaly!). Medical problem, I guess. It’s one hell of a problem in this side of the world, more so, if you are an outsider. I myself took time adjusting to the local weather, had to be medicated a couple of times. This takes me back a couple of years, when I snubbed the CMO, IITG. God! What a prig I was.

“…how to compute the probability…given the…we try to uncover the hidden part of the model…”

The nodding goes on as usual. Lata is sitting right in front of me or as they say I just came and sat right on the back of her. I tell you, I am losing charm in her overtime; her being married hasn’t helped much either. I think it’s finally over.

The Friends For Sale (FFS) application on Facebook is really making me crazy. When I meet someone new, I often find myself guessing how much he is worth.

“…we try to use optimality criterion to solve this problem as best as possible…”

Here comes champu and jj. Pucchu is not here yet. Today champu and I went to Prof. Ketaki. She is the instructor for our humanities course. It was about our presentation that is due.

“…model parameter is called the training sequence…”

Oops! Sir tried to peak into my writing.

I had one of the most satisfying talks with her. She sensed a bit of political sense in me from my mid-sem answer scripts. She talked about how not to lose sense of what we believe in and how we feel about it. “The whole world will try and take it away from you…but it’s so divine that it must be protected”. Her words are still ringing in my ears.

“…let N be the size of the code book. So we get the seq of vectors out of M diff. indexes”

Why is the attendance so low today? I can hardly count 15.

Where was I? Yes, champu. He is the sort of guy who keeps the group going. “Never let the fun die out”. Champu tried to peek into my diary. I gave him the finger.

“…to segment each of the word training sequence into stages and study the prob. Of the spectral vectors.”

God! I feel sleepy. It’s been 2 days now, I guess.

JJ and I finished working on a term paper recently. It dealt with DNA cryptography, such a novel idea. We have worked really hard on it. Hope it materializes.

It’s the purple suit and a brown hair clip today. Can’t I leave it already?

“…once the w-HMM’s recognition of an uttered unknown word is done using a solution to problem.. each word is modeled based upon the given test observation sequence…”

The FFS is engulfing like hell. I was just napping about it. God it’s great. I heard a remark about me sitting in this particular seat. I got the hint.

Champu sneezed, kido yawned while ld enjoyed the usual nap. FFS once again crossed my thoughts. Don’t call me crazy. If you think you don’t get addicted that easily, try it once.

I am not down with the Friends for Sale application. I’m not for sale. I’m not your pet. Chill with that. What Facebook applications annoy you? 

gestern georg holzer, heute dieter zirnig,…

friends for sale erfreut sich großer beliebtheit