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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New statistics from comScore

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Ted Simon of Kabam, one of the developers in Google+ game’s pilot launch, told SocialTimes Pro the company’s so far seen a promising response by Google+ users to its complex strategy games with a deep social focus:

“Based on early returns, we’re pleased with how things are going so far for our two titles on Google+ games, Edgeworld and Dragons of Atlantis,” Simon told us. “Those are both hardcore social games, not casual games, and Google+ gamers are responding to them well. That’s an indicator that members of our primary audience, core gamers, are residing on this platform.”

As Altimeter’s Jeremiah Owyang sees it, Google+ is an opportunity for game developers simply by being a relatively large social network: “All social profiles are key for game developers, as they can tap into existing networks for increased ability for login and registration,” he told SocialTimes Pro. “Secondly, by using existing friend networks they can increase the chance of content, scoreboards, leaderboards, and sharing of virtual goods.”

In the estimation of comScore’s Andrew Lipsman, Google+ will need about 20% total market penetration to establish itself sufficiently and grow organically. “[Once] a site reaches 20% penetration in the U.S. for example,” he explained to SocialTimes Pro, “the network effects tend to strengthen and propel it higher.” (Lipsman noted that Facebook, and before it MySpace only, reached critical mass upon reaching this level of market penetration.) “That means 35 or 40 million users in the U.S.”

According to comScore, Google+ had about 6 million monthly U.S. uniques at the end of July. So while Google+ is showing strong growth in its early months, it will probably still need tens of millions more in the U.S. alone, before becoming an attractive platform for game developers.

Flurry’s Jeferson Valadares did offer cautious advice for developers interested in Google+: “I think if you manage to get support from Google it might be worth taking a chance,” he told us. For those developers who do wish to pursue this opportunity, Valadares had this recommendation: “Be ready to figure out monetization for yourself since Google Checkout penetration is not particularly high,” he told us. Related to this (and based on Flurry’s analysis of iOS and Android app monetization), Valadares recommended that Google game developers “not rely 100% on Google Checkout and to find out alternative ways of making revenue such as Trialpay or find some other payment providers in parallel.”

What’s incumbent on Google, Will Harbin, CEO of leading hardcore social game developer Kixeye, told us, is this: “They need to prove they have traction that makes it worth our while… Meanwhile, life as a game developer on the browser and Facebook is quite good.” He went on to argue that for his company at least, Facebook’s 30% commission on revenue is more than compensated for by the social network’s large user base. “We didn’t see any change in revenue [since switching to Facebook Credits].” Harbin added that the company has been increasing month-over-month in revenue, even with Facebook’s 30% take.

At the moment, Google+ has no key market differentiator to Facebook, in great part because it has branded itself as a network for real names and identities, which is also the core branding identity of Facebook. This cedes enormous advantage to Facebook and, in SocialTimes Pro’s view, misses a tremendous market opportunity: To become the social network that can also appeal to all those who wish to share content with the many individuals in their extended, Internet-based social circles, via hundreds of millions of pseudonymous identities. By a very rough estimate, there are about 200 million of these in the West alone, a great many from Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms, and perhaps as many associated with gaming platforms, such as the online service Steam (30 million) and virtual world games such as Habbo Hotel, Gaia Online, IMVU, and Second Life (25 million+). Allowing and enabling pseudonymous identities would give Google+ a unique value proposition distinct from Facebook. And, because so many pseudonymous identities are associated with online games, such an offering could greatly increase interest and engagement with Google+ games in particular.

Purchase the rest of this report here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

fishlighting.com

PlentyOfFish is a free internet dating service, and some of you might find this amazing that people don’t realize how big PlentyofFish has become. Sure, being free has its plus-points, but then the platform has to deliver. It looks like the online dating service is delivering the goods.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Tumblr, the blog-meets-social-network service, has hit new record in terms of the number of unique users in the U.S. this July. According to comScore, the site recorded 13.4 million unique visitors in July 2011 up from 4.2 million visitors in July 2010, which is an increase of 218%.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

PBS has found that digital has broadened its audience. With the advent of videos online, an audience has arrived and it is time to deliver the goods. Jason Seiken, SVP for PBS Interactive and Product Development, told paidContent in an interview, “Just to put our progress into perspective, about 3 years ago, we had roughly 2 million streams a month.” Seiken added, “And now, we’ve reached 145 million a month. With that as a foundation, we’re looking for revenue to offset our costs, and video is expensive. So that’s where the focus is now.”

Seiken says much of the growth is driven by video and the net income is up 110 percent. It is very likely both the audience and revenue growth will continue to grow.

Interestingly, the bulk of the web video has been on kids’ programming for two reasons. Kids’ digital programming costs less because productions are on the simple side. Secondly, education is very much a part of PBS’ policy. Kids prefer longer-form webisodes, while adults want clips and highlights.

PBS can be viewed via Android where users can just watch the programming through the broadcaster’s website. However, PBS has no plans to develop an app for the mobile device.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

YouTube and comScore, a global leader in online audience measurement, have launched a brand new feature, specifically targeted to YouTube content partners and the advertisers that want to run campaigns on their videos.  YouTube Partner Reporting offers new measurement tools that enable YouTube partners to better monetize their content and better analyze the demographics of their viewers.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Social commerce is probably on the business minds of every retailer who wants to tap into the endless opportunities of social media. According to a recent study, Facebook is not a favorite platform for social commerce, but is a favorite for those who like to shop on the internet.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

According to newly released report from comScore, professional social network LinkedIn best Myspace in June regarding overall traffic. Linkedin is now the No. 2 most visited social networking site in the U.S. Of course, the increase of traffic started with LinkedIn filed its IPO in May, reaching the ultimate of 33.9 million unique visitors in June compared to Myspace with 33.5 million unique visitors. MySpace decreased in numbers from 34.9 million in May. But, Myspace has new owners, so we might see a change in the numbers in the ensuing months.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Yahoo! Finance and Dow Jones topped the list. Bloomberg tallied 9 million unique visitors in December 2009.

Bloomberg News head of global Web properties Kevin Krim told Beet.TV the media company’s goal is to build “influence,” added, “The first thing to realize about Bloomberg is that we invest in our media businesses, including our Web properties, for one primary reason: We want influence.”

Krim also said the site will remain subscription-free, Beet.TV reported.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.