Interview With Playdom About Facebook Expansion

Yesterday, Playdom, formerly known as You Plus, announced their expansion from MySpace to Facebook. I took the opportunity to speak with them about their thoughts on the state of social gaming as well as the differences between building on the MySpace platform versus Facebook platform. One of the most interesting things about Playdom is that like other large social gaming networks, they have a large percentage of users returning on a daily basis.

As I mention in the podcast, repeat usage is often a very good indicator of how much a social gaming network is making. The company claims that approximately half of their revenue comes through direct payments (people spending money on virtual gifts or leveling up), and half is generated through offer-based advertising networks.

It’s clear that social games continue to be the most popular applications on social networks. Earlier this week I wrote about a new company, Twofish, which has built a platform to track all activities within virtual economies as well as help monetize them. The Playdom team said that they already have a proprietary system that has been developed in house for tracking their virtual economies.

The company is actively looking for new employees which is why they just came out of the woodworks. If you want to learn more about Playdom, check out my podcast with them below.

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.