Social gaming: Zynga’s a winner

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/bebos-friends-desert-it-1938655.html

“Zynga, the social gaming company behind Facebook games such as Mafia Wars and Farmville would be worth $5bn if it was traded publicly today, research suggests. The group’s shares currently trade at $9 on the illiquid private market, but would be worth 75 per cent more if Zynga went public, according to a study by former Goldman Sachs and Sanford Bernstein analysts for SecondShares.com. They said that online social gaming was “huge, growing rapidly and highly profitable”. Zynga currently has a pool of 237 million monthly players, and 50 per cent of monthly active users of the top 10 game developers on Facebook. From revenue estimates of $300m last year, the analysts expect Zynga to hit $1bn by 2012.”

This stands in the face of Bebo being on it’s way out – 237 million active monthly users.  It seems the disabling of Facebook Notifications haven’t halted Zynga’s marchto being the most powerful people on Facebook.

Heineken : The Champagne of Marketing

Even one month on, this stunt by Heineken still sends shivers down my spine.

Bye Bye Bebo – It Wasn’t That Social Anyway

So the news finally arrived this morning that Bebo was set to be either closed down or sold within the next month by AOL which is rather hefty fall from grace having being bought for $850 million just two years ago.

So why has it lost the social networking race?  When I started at my current role, I immersed myself in Bebo to help understand how best to engage with the young people that were using it.  And I found it a scary place.  At first I thought that I was simply being a Facebook snob having been able to get on Facebook back in 2005 due to my University being one of the lucky ones allowed on when it first came to the UK, but after a good few weeks of heavy Bebo using, I simply didn’t like it.

Bebo seemed to want to be a more MySpace than Facebook and hoped to think that the customisation would keep people hooked.  But there in lies the problem – style took precedence over substance.

Facebook completely hinges around what you and your friends are up to or what they’ve been up to, but Bebo really seems to have the social side as a by-product.  Where Facebook is based around your news feed, Bebo makes it exceptionally difficult to find out what your friends are up to.  Your wall on Facebook is sacred for your friends, whilst on Bebo your comment section is peppered with ‘Thanks for the add’ or ‘Add me’.  On Facebook you try to keep it to friends or at the very most acquaintances but with Bebo…we’re talking tens of thousands.  On Facebook everything is tidy.  On Bebo, it really is a jumbled mess due to user generated skins being the order of the day.

Simply put, Bebo is not as social as Facebook – so how is it ever going to be a better social network?