Social Gaming

This infographic by JESS3, takes a look at what the average statistics are for the social network on any given day, including number of friends, private messages and comments.

Have you ever wondered who plays the most social games? A new infographic from Flowtown breaks it down. ‘Who Are Social Gamers?’ takes a look at everything from the gender, age, family situation, education, income, employment and more to find out who, exactly, social gamers are.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

YouTube has already tackled the web and mobile. Now they are moving on to full domination, bringing their service to television as well with the launch of a YouTube app for Xbox Live.

Orkut possesses 66 million active users — virtually 60 percent of which come from Brazil. SuperData also reports that games played on platforms, excluding Facebook, such as Orkut, are predicted to gain $5.6 billion in revenue by 2014.

This infographic by JESS3, takes a look at what the average statistics are for the social network on any given day, including number of friends, private messages and comments.

Tapjoy and PapayaMobile today announced that they are partnering to launch Social Marketplace that provides users with recommendations on which apps to download. Both companies have released a flurry of announcements recently and this particular news could be great for developers and users alike. More after the jump.

As console developers continue to expand to social and mobile platforms, I had a chance to get with Bear Trickey, Jesse Venbrux and Zach Aikman of Q-Games who recently launched PixelJunk Monsters Online on Facebook in an interview where they shared their approach to developing for Facebook. More after the jump.

Revenues from virtual goods sales in social games is growing exponentially each year and has the potential to reach $4 billion globally by 2016. Nonetheless, successfully monetizing social games is nowalk in the park, especially for those developers who may not have all the necessary resources. Luckily for them, the PlayPhone social gaming network just released PlayPhone PXP, a complete tool set ofadvanced virtual goods management tools supporting Android, iOS, and HTML5. More after the jump.

Personalization in games is less talked about compared to various other topics such as distribution and monetization. That’s because it is difficult to discuss as actionable insights get lost among the heaps of data developers collect. Making breakthroughs in this space is a company called Swrve that I had a pleasure to sit down with and discuss their emerging platform. More after the jump.

Mobile social gaming network GREE has recently announced its plan to launch a cohesive mobile gaming platform by mid 2012. In addition, the Japanese giant is also projecting net sales of around $1.7B, a 40 percent jump from the firm’s previous projections. This news comes at a time when DeNA is aggressively laying out its plans for Mobage Global after achieving a net income of around $105M for the quarter. More after the jump.

It’s no longer a mystery: CrowdStar’s entering the midcore market with a strategy game for social gamers on Facebook called Wasteland Empires. The social gaming company’s MAU count fell from 20M at the beginning of the month to 12M in mid October, with Facebook’s changes in how it counts active users accounting for a rough 3M count loss. More after the jump.