EVCin

While some have reported developers seeing a 20-30% drop in traffic and usage since Facebook pushed aside the live news feed for an algorithmic feed, Zynga is one of the first to visibily be trying to crack the code.

For developers, the constantly changing Facebook platform has always been a challenge. At least this time they’re getting a roadmap. And while those changes are pretty significant, they should improve the quality of interaction with users. The message is clear: it’s time to innovate again and make the new tools and APIs available work to keep users engaged and to virally grow the base in a little less “spammy” way.

The concept is straight forward – the more a user comes back and plays, the more engaged they are. And the more engaged they are, from my experience at PowerSoccer.com, the easier it is to monetize them. Why? A user who comes in and plays your game every day is much more likely [...]

As more marketers look to game mechanics as a way to incent users to talk about their brands, there’s the distinct possiblity of a glut of “social spam” in the near future. As users get more judicious about filtering, quality content will be the true incentive to engaging customers.

It’s time to stop looking at monthly active users as a way to track the success of Facebook applications. By leveraging daily active users as a percent of monthly total users, you can create a relative benchmark for engagement and help you identify which applications are most likely to succeed.