Eric von Coelln digs into the numbers behind social media, marketing, casual games and more.
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Developers Revamp Viral Marketing Tactics to Comply with Changes to Facebook Policies

Facebook started enforcing a slew of application policies over the last week, forcing game developers to revamp their viral marketing. Here are three of the top changes and how top developers are revamping their viral marketing tactics.

Top Social Games Take a Hit: Seasonal Declines or Something Bigger?

The top games on Facebok are down 11% from their highs this month. While it looks like it might be due to the holidays, the successive declines in the peaks of the latest Zynga releases might suggest the life cycle for social games is changing.

Five Reasons Facebook Games Are Not a Fad

As originally published at Games.com and later highlighted by Silicon Alley Insider.
No one questions whether sharing news or photos with friends and family is a fad, and when people get together to socialize, they often play games – from bridge to charades to Trivial Pursuit. As one of the largest social gathering spots on [...]

A Proposal: How to Deal with Facebook’s Games Problem

A funny thing happened to Facebook’s open platform – game developers took the opportunity and ran with it, even taking over the core of the service for a while. By this fall, parts of the site had become overrun with users trying to get their friends to join them on their farm, help their mafia [...]

PetVille Ends Cross-Promotion of Zynga Poker – Are Synchronous Games Dead?

When Zynga stopped cross-promoting their synchronous poker game, it signalled that asynchronous game play may be the better long-term game mechanic for the Facebook platform. I look at the stages of Zynga’s social game development and how the fast growing audience has responded to earlier games. I also see a growing disconnect, where games are pushing the boundaries of users social bonds, subtly coercing users to befriend strangers to unlock new items and levels and wonder if a better filtering mechanism could help the growth of both Facebook, game developers and users.