Are Facebook Apps “Useless?” Or is Casual Gaming a Cash Cow?
A statistical breakdown (courtesy of FlowingData) of the categorization of Facebook apps reveals that a vast majority of them are of the “just for fun” or “gaming” variety, prompting Vasanth Sridharan of Silicon Alley Insider to declare Facebook apps “useless.”
But is this true? Paul Glazowski of Mashable disagrees, saying, “[S]ocial networks [will] thrive well into the future largely due to developments in gaming and general leisure and amusements.”
I think there’s a big difference here, though: “amusements,” which likely fits into the rather large “just for fun” column, include the kind of goofy one-off apps that nobody spends more than a minute a week on. Gaming, the second biggest (yet much smaller) category is far more likely to lead to significant amounts of time and opportunities for advertising that could be lucrative for developers and advertisers. Take a look at the chart…
Glazowski argues that there is a movement in the direction of simple, low-fi games that can be played with friends on social networks. Scrabulous was an example of how a simple game could generate a ton of traffic, and the popularity of the Nintendo Wii suggests casual gaming is something people are interested on perhaps a wider market than mainstream gamers.
This data from FlowingData is a mixed bag. On one hand, many apps the “just for fun” category will be a lot more difficult to monetize unless they can attract something more than just brief utilization.
However, social network gaming presents a big opportunity for addictive, ad-happy applications that can be effectively monetized.
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