Facebook results Q3/2012 (before mobile app install ads launch)

• Mobile ads: 14% of total or $150 million (TechCrunch)
• Mobile MAU: 604 million (FB investor relations)

Facebook results Q1/2013 (investor call highlights success of mobile app install ads = big growth & revenue driver)

• Mobile ads: 30% of total or about $373.5 million (FB investor relations)
• Mobile MAU: 751 million (FB investor relations)
• Install ad results = 25 million installs driven globally though iOS App Store & Google Play store (TechCrunch)

Assuming other mobile ads grow at the same rate as the size of mobile audience: $150M * (751/604) = $186.5 million, or 50% of mobile ad revenue. Update: to be clear, this is an assumption. Non-install mobile ads could be growing a lot faster, say 30% faster than MAU, that is, grow a total 67% from Q3/2012 to Q1/2013 ($150M to $242M).

Keeping the original assumption mobile install ads grossed $187 million.

FB mobile ad CPI high end estimate = $187 million / 25 million installs = $7.5 / install

If we assume non-install ads grew 30% faster than mobile MAUs, then mobile install ads grossed $131 million.

FB mobile ad CPI low end estimate = $131 million / 25 million installs = $5.2 / install

To put this into perspective, mobile CPI from video ads (nearest in quality to FB ads) go for about $3 at volume.

Updated above: the key assumption here is the growth rate of the other mobile ads. It is possible that my estimate of 67% growth of non-install mobile ad revenue in 6 months is low, but that would mean that brand advertisers suddenly decided to really get on board with mobile ads. Facebook itself has really only been vocal about the how good results mobile app install ads are providing, which leads me to believe that the growth on non-install ads is not as strong as the takeup of install ads.

I was reading up today how Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook co-founder, now Asana founder), Peter Thiel & Max Levchin of Paypal fame et al were lamenting at Techcrunch Disrupt how the startups in the valley don’t do enough to “change the world”. I found myself nodding as well as shaking my head.

Sure, we’ve got enough of people trying to solve photo sharing. Like films (Deep Impact, Armageddon) there seems to be trends that follow-on entrepreneurs pile on. Cloning and iteration do benefit the industry, but you also want folks to working on something new and innovative. Agreed with these gentlemen there.

At the same time it boggles my mind that these awesome entrepreneurs are pooh-poohing companies that start small. Facebook started out as a hot-or-not clone called Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg gave an interview in 2005 that there probably wouldn’t be much more to be done outside of college & university audiences. Peter & Max started Paypal with a relatively small concept of beaming money from a Palm Pilot to another.

I believe world changing companies and entrepreneurs start small by necessity. When you find traction, you scale both as the company and as the entrepreneur. Dustin, Peter and Max have scaled and so have their ambitions and their point of view. I’m sure they remember exactly where they come from and how they started small, but they see “wider” now. I don’t think they are dishing the best kind of advice though. Yes, you need a vision for a big company that at best times will change the world for better, but you absolutely need to start small. Unless you already co-founded Facebook, Paypal, Genentech, AdMob, Google, … and can afford to short circuit the process (of scaling yourself as an entrepreneur & resources for your company).

Start small. Scale when you can. Work towards a big vision.

Mark Suster recently wrote an excellent article on the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship. I’ve been through that rollercoaster ride amped up with a few jet engines strapped to my back in those nine months. When we launched Applifier together with fellow social game publishers, I had no idea that the idea would grow to became a successful service reaching over tens of millions monthly active users. I was only trying to survive.

Everyplay (as our company was known then) was at the brink of death with a only a few months of cashflow left. Out of that desperation came the idea to try cross-promotion across small and medium sized publishers. It was the opportune time and we executed. But it would have not worked without the trust and support of our launch members. I’m incredibly thankful for their support, guidance and help.

Thank you Nabeel, Daniel, Raph, Jason, Keith, James, Stan, Moo, Luke, Rex, Magnus and Johan.

Applifier was founded to work for publishers. It is a privilege to work for so many great companies and see their games succeed.

Come mid-summer 2010 we were running on fumes. Money was nearly gone. Applifier was taking off like a rocket. Kamu Town, our game, languished. I had an obvious, but a very difficult decision to make. The vision I had crafted and promised to our team had not realized. We weren’t going to make it with games. The hardest day arrived when I had to face the facts, stop all game development and layoff good friends from the company. We ended up drinking and being merry the same night and parted ways with a ton of respect for everybody. I didn’t stop working for my former employees until I found them new employment at great companies like Rovio and Digital Chocolate. Personally one of the coolest things that Applifier has made possible is that I was able recruit back one of the guys I had had to lay off. Makes me smile.

Thank you Matti, Jussi and Pekka for believing in my vision and going the extra mile. It was a privilege to work on Kamu Town with you.

At the same time Applifier was growing explosively, but were a total nobody. An unknown, obscure Finnish startup trying to raise money in the Valley and not even knowing who to talk to. I had some ideas of investors I should try and reach, but I didn’t know them. Fortunately many great friends believed in us and put their reputation on the line to introduce us to the right people.

Thank you Paul, Wili, Jyri, Brett, Frank, Pekka, Josh, Taneli, Jukka.

Those warm intros opened the doors and our traction kept the doors open. We were up to around 30M MAU in reach in just a few months, but at the same also nearly out of cash. Applifier was delivering great results to its publishers, so our graphs continued to go up and to the right. If anything, that moves things forward in a funding round. It sounds cliché, but it is absolutely true.

The saying is that a Valley investor won’t invest into a company to whose office he can’t drive to. To my surprise I found that to be untrue. We pitched nearly 40 seed investors and only one outright turned us down because we aren’t a Delaware corporation. Everybody else was ok as long as the legal & tax impact of investing into Finland were known and the CEO would move over to the valley. (yes, that’s were I’m headed)

Traction was definitely the thing that helped investor to get over the “Where in the world is Finland?” issue. The cross-promo model worked and our publishers got great results from using Applifier. The technology worked extremely well too, but only because Matti and Jalmari, our technical co-founders, totally outdelivered re-writing Applifier’s systems several times over and working days and nights to keep up with the amazing load.

Thank you Matti and Jalmari. I couldn’t have found more competent and outstanding technical co-founders.

We were fortunate to meet several great investors, many of whom went out of their way to help us. The decision who to bring on board was not a trivial one. We were “getting married”, but unlike a marriage, there would be no option for a divorce. In the end our decision came down to choosing investors who were entrepreneurs themselves and whose own investors were entrepreneurs.

It’s great to have MHS Capital, PROfounders and Lifeline on board. These seed funds’ own investors are all successful entrepreneurs. It’s been an absolute privilege for me to talk with Ali Partovi (who backs MHS Capital), one of the founders of Link Exchange, who were the true pioneers of the cross-promotion model in the pre-Google days. So much in common with the businesses even if they are separated by over 15 years. Jyri, David and Lars are all successful entrepreneurs with huge domain expertise. Mark at MHS Capital, Sean & Rogan at PROfounders, Petteri, Timo, Jarkko and Ilkka at Lifeline all think and act like entrepreneurs.

Tekes, the Finnish funding agency for technology and innovation, has supported our R&D efforts since day 1. We are thrilled to join their Young Innovative Companies and show that fast growth, international startups can be created in Finland just as well as anywhere in the world.

Thank you Mark, Sean, Rogan, Jyri, David, Lars and Pauli for backing our vision.

While I was galloping around the world and obsessing over Applifier’s offering, the one person that kept things going at Applifier HQ and provided a steady hand to everything was Pekka, our fourth co-founder. Pekka and I go ways back as we’ve together run ASSEMBLY the largest Finnish computer festival since early 1990s.

Thank you Pekka, for being a friend and a co-founder for close to 20 years now.

During the fall of 2010 we’ve built up our team and have had incredible success in recruiting awesome folks whose work is now starting show through our feature launches like retargeting, our new network for web games and several cool things that will launch in the near future.

Thank you Teemu, AT, Antti, Garo, Pekka, Tuomas, Mika, Eemu, Juho and Reina.

This rollercoaster ride has been a thrill, but combining it with a family of two young kids makes for a busier life than I could have ever imagined. The understanding, support and love my wife Eija has given me over these months is beyond words. That she would resign her own job and relocate to a foreign country that she has never been to is simply amazing and humbling to me.

Thank you Eija for your love and support.

I’m privileged to be on this journey and work with so many talented people, work for awesome publishers and have the advice and support of people I respect.

Applifier is the creation of everybody involved. Thank you.

Just over a month ago I was really struck by the lack of good options to help us grow Kamu Town in addition to pure virality. I decided to do something about it instead of just accepting the worsening status quo.

We started building what was to become Applifier and talked with a bunch of other independent social game developers. It was painfully obvious that a lot of high quality games had the same challenges we have, so encouraged by the early validation we pushed on. We really hit off with Nabeel of Conduit Labs, who had on his own been working towards the very same goals.

So the rebel alliance was born and you can read all about it on Inside Social Games.

We started working on Kamu Town late last year. We wanted to create an “easy fun” game with a distinctive personality and we most definitely wanted to include our beloved Kamus in it. Back then there were no town/city building games on Facebook, so naturally we thought we should have our game in a different genre instead of doing one of crowded farming/pet/cafe genres. Ah, the irony of finding yourself launching into one of the most crowded of the emerging genres on Facebook =).

Not to worry though, Kamu Town is pretty distinctive and we are bringing some pretty unique features to it in the near future that you won’t find any other town/city game (then again, don’t take my word for it, just re-read the paragraph above about my forecasting skills =)).

Have a go and do give us feedback on the Discussions page on Facebook.

Just building myself a Science Park. That’ll keep my techie Kamus happy!

Dirty Hands (CC) Bah Humbug on Flickr

Gaming is a dirty thing.

There. I said it. It’s 2010 and still the mainstream press continues to treat games as curiosity for kids, or smear players with sensationalist headlines. Game development as a serious career choice? I’m sure your parent’s and career counselor will tell you to rather become a doctor, lawyer or an engineer.

Could you possibly consider trying to pick up a girl / boy at the bar by asking her / him to come to your place to  play some video games? Just contrast this to let’s watch a movie together, or listen to some good music. (Yeah, kids, don’t try the video games pickup line =)).

But what happens when all your normal friends and family members start broadcasting their gaming? Surely your 45 year old aunt didn’t just ice you in Mafia Wars? What’s with your younger sister hosting a barn raising in FarmVille? Is that a flirting cupcake from your loved one in Pet Society?

Facebook and social games have done more than anything ever for the positive image of gaming and games. By making our gameplay visible to everybody in social graph and making it part of the the stream of your life (baby photos, Country Story achievements, your FML moments, latest movie trailers, helping friends to retaliate in Mobsters, birthday congratulations, …), Facebook has made gaming OK.

(CC) Sean Dreilinger, on Flickr

Gaming is was a dirty thing.

Thank you Facebook.

P.S. Though you can’t pick up (yet!) somebody at bar by “Let’s play Pet Society together”, I’m pretty sure it’ll be a nice touch to send some virtual roses once you start going steady! ;-)

Communication features change

On one front Facebook is revamping the communication mediums available for developers. This includes notifications going away, lot of stuff being moved to the inbox, the algorithmic stream change of last week and the new games dashboard to name a few. The best summary of these changes for any developer is the Facebook Platform roadmap.

I was originally concerned that Facebook would totally nerf application growth thru these changes, but after reading thru the changes, the functionality change isn’t really that drastic. The Stream will continue to be the main mass communication tool, and the Inbox based communication together with the new Dashboard are a great replacement for notifications. The game developers will go thru a round of iteration with these new features, but as we saw a year ago with the removal of profile boxes (then the most prominent application virality feature), the developers are quick to adapt.

The second change is much more important.

Facebook’s platform policies have gotten a lot stricter

(CC) Paul Keleher

Most of the blog coverage of yesterday’s Facebook Developer Garage focuses on the above functionality changes and is missing the real beef of what’s going on. The changes in the Facebook Platform Policy are much more important than the functionality changes.

Zynga is the master of viral distribution and many others copy their best practices (one notable exception being Playfish, who is quite reserved on their viral features). If I were to exaggerate, Facebook has taken a long hard look at what Zynga and its copycats do and decided to forbid many of their most successful practices:

Apps can no longer popup “Publish to stream” forms. This is done currently extensively at e.g. level ups, achievements. Now stream publishing can only be prompted after a player specifically clicks on such button.

Apps can no longer mislead players by making the default button e.g. a invite friends function. I can’t count how many times I’ve clicked on the friendly looking green button in Cafe World’s login report screen only to end up at the invite friends screen when I just wanted to proceed to the game. This action button now must have a “skip” button next to it in a similar size & style.

Apps can no longer gate content or reward players based on the number of friends playing. Mafia Wars and its clones are completely built upon this mechanic with mob size based powerups and limitations built-in. It will be very painful to change these game mechanics as it means that every single players’ in-game standing & resources will change.

Apps can no longer incentivize players to e.g. invite or message friends or publish to stream. This has been pretty much the rule already, but Facebook has been somewhat lax in enforcing it. It remains to be seen if this will be used against features such as “Share the wealth” mechanic popularized by Zynga in FarmVille to incentivize posting to the stream (clicking on Get the Special bonus link shown above gives a bonus to you as well as to the player who posted to the stream).

There are more e.g. a rule that forbids Apps from no longer publishing Stream stories that invite a player to a game or include calls to action “e.g. beat her score”.

If Facebook is really serious about enforcing these policies, this will mean a tectonic shift on how games can grow on the platform. Will Facebook enforce these rules against Zynga,  who is apparently contributing $50 million to Facebook’s revenues thru buying Facebook ads?

I’m sure there will be in a grace period during which developers are expected to change their practices and games. How long that period is, is still unclear. Facebook representatives themselves didn’t go into much detail about the policy changes at yesterday’s event.

To be clear: Zynga has operated according to the existing rules of the platform and has been wildly successful. It takes a lot more than just virality to become the TOP1 company on Facebook. The above is not to dig on Zynga – it is just that many of their most copied approaches are being invalidated. And to be honest, if the rules wouldn’t have been changed, we’d most likely would have also adapted many of Zynga’s approaches – that’s how successful they’ve been.

Why is this great news for smaller developers?

(CC) Richkidsunite

These are great changes for smaller developers because

• virality is compounded growth: with a high user base, the forbidden practices were useful to getting higher absolute number of new users into those apps. If these new rules are enforced, the bigger apps’ growth will likely slow down and leave room for smaller players
• game quality matters: with less spam it will take better quality games to succeed. This should also benefit Playfish.
• originality matters: it will be a bit harder to copy a new original game and grow it rapidly. However, the big players have the marketing spend to boost any new game they want
• players will be more in charge: with less spam, new players are likely to react more positively to friend’s inviting them to games
• discoverability improves: the games dashboard should help also new apps surface
• the playing field is more even – if just for a while: everybody needs to find the new best practices

It is good to note that this is just the roadmap for the next few months for the Facebook Platform. There will definitely more changes ahead.

More coverage about Facebook Platform changes

• Inside Facebook’s summary, complete run down of changes and screenshot gallery
• Venturebeat’s summary and liveblog
• TechCrunch’s liveblog
• ReadWriteWeb’s brief summary
• Official announcement from Facebook
• Facebook Platform Roadmap (the best technical & game design resource)
• Facebook’s updated Platform policies
• Video recording of Facebook developer garage

Seedcamp is an amazing program for European startups. The best and brightest of European startups compete for a spot in the Seedcamp week in London. The week is stock full of amazing workshops, tutorials, hands-on training and perhaps most importantly world class networking with European and US serial entrepreneurs, investors and deal makers. If you are chosen as a winner the Seedcamp organizers (The Accelerator Group) will invest €50 000 at a quite rational valuation.

Sounds perfect for any startup. So why didn’t Everyplay apply to Seedcamp? Double why as I even participated as a mentor in the Seedcamp Helsingborg event?

The truth is yes, I really wanted to apply because I love the concept, but it is was made impossible by the “extended Seedcamp concept“. The main use for that invested €50 000 is to bring the core members of the startup team to London for three months to take the company further. By applying to Seedcamp you agree to this.

Let’s just stop there for a moment. This works perfectly for 20-somethings that don’t have obligations to anybody but themselves and who can just pack a suitcase and go. It also requires that your core team is quite small, so that you can get your whole core team over to London.

The concept fails when you or any core member of your team is married, has kids or in general has a life outside of the company. It also fails if you can’t bring all core team members over to London as otherwise you are totally impairing your company’s progress at a very sensitive stage by splitting the team into two (one part staying at home base and another part in London).

Everyplay’s core team has several people who are over 30 year old, are married and have kids. Packing up our lives and moving to London for three months isn’t an option, so we had to pass on Seedcamp. To be fair, this is not dig on Seedcamp. They are just doing the same as Y Combinator is doing in the States.

However, it is interesting to think about this selection criteria in the light of research results reported by TechCrunch that the average founder of a high-growth company launched his venture at age 40. I believe Seedcamp is limiting itself unnecessarily with this “move to London for three months” requirement.

(CC) by tibchris on Flickr

Seedcamp aside, the bigger question is how can one succeed as an entrepreneur in a high tech startup and have a family life. Steve Blank recently posted about how he and his wife managed to stick together and raise their kids while going thru a couple startups. My own experiences and arrangements are very much like his.

The reality is that it feels like running two startups in parallel. It is physically, mentally and emotionally taxing, but also immensely rewarding. At the risk of sounding corny, seeing things thru a child’s eyes is eye opening. Being a parent is a monumental, continous learning experience. It does sound just like running startup =) and I actually do think that having an entrepreneurial mindset really helps in parenting.

I like to compare running a startup to having kids as both bring with them higher emotional highs and lower lows at a lot faster pace than before. With that in mind, it is easy to justify Seedcamp’s and Y Combinator’s selection criteria  – less hassle, just focus on the startup. But with age comes victories, mistakes, experience, and possibly even expertise and insight. To quote a recent post on Both Sides of the Table, one of my favourite VC blogs:

“Good judgment comes from experience,

but experience comes from bad judgment“

The finalists for this year’s Seedcamp were announced today. Congratulations and best of luck to everyone!

I wish I could have been there too.

Last week at ASSEMBLY Summer 2009, Everyplay soft launched a limited feature-set, public beta of Kamu World, our first application on Facebook. More than anything our goal with this launch was to put out a small, but polished application to see what people liked or disliked about it. We intentionally avoided doing press releases or talking to blogs about it, because the application at its current state is just a sneak preview of what’s to come. But we definitely failed miserably on keeping it under the radar as we got covered on Arctic Startup and TechCrunch UK (+ several other blogs) ;-).

So far the response has been very positive – especially for the characters and the art style, which received a lot of love and attention from our art director. It’s great to see people responding well to Kamus!

Even so, I do relate to LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s slogan “If you are not embarrassed to launch, you are launching too late” ;-). There is a ton features currently under development and we aim to roll out those in the near future. So if Kamu World piqued your interest, do become a fan on Facebook and we’ll let you know as new features become available.

To get those exciting features done, Everyplay is hiring senior developers on server (Java) and client side (Flash/AS3). If you want to work on cool social games with a pretty kick ass team, do get in touch!

I couldn’t make Social Games Summit 2009 and I’m totally bummed I missing out on Casual Connect Seattle 2009 too (it has an superb line-up of speakers in the social games track). So once again, I’m left observing the event from afar. Like I did for the Social Games Summit, I’m collecting misc tidbits and blog posting about social games from the event into this blog entry. I will update the entry as more stuff comes thru as the Casual Connect is still going on (until the 23rd of July).

Jessica Tams and the team behind the events do a fantastic job on also sharing the information post the event. All slides and audio recordings will be available free of charge (like they are here for the previous events). Jessica is absolutely right that the value of the Casual Games Association is measured by how much they can do for the industry as a whole and sharing information is key part on expanding the industry.

Misc tidbits from tweets (#casualconnect)

• @gamersvu_abi Playfish/Zynga/Playdom say social games $1.5B industry in 3 years
• @mikesego: “love is the most important metric” says @sebdeh from Playfish… best answer of the conference
• @tadej Zynga: games services rather than products. Number of returning players (not play time) correlates with monetization.
• @katelollar: There are more than 55 million unique [game] players on Facebook every month
• @amyjokim: why have >1 currencies in a virtual economy? CONTROL. Too risky to have only 1 currency
• @noahkagan @ what women want panel, #casualconnectwomen focused on collection, keeping active and socializing. 1 knew exact point count on king.com
• @amyjokim offer your players LOTS of diff ways to spend money (and diff price pts)
• @danielleleslie Q: How can game monetization models offer scalable engagement and attract branded dollars? A: Anu from Offerpal: Soon, fb app user will watch movie trailer, listen to music clip, etc. in return for virtual currency.
• @NPDFrazier: Tom Prata – three pillars of successful games: 1) accessibility 2) sense of newness 3) consumer reaction
• @bonder Trend 1 Virtual Worlds – YoVille, Pet Society
• @bonder Trend 2 – Customization & Personalization – Farm Town, Sorority Life
• @bonder Trend 3 – Collections & Wish Lists – Mafia Wars
• @bonder Trend 4 – Simulations – Farm Town, Farmville, Barn Buddy, Restaurant City (Realtime sim)
• @bonder Trend 5 – Narrative – Hammerfall, Bloodlines
• @bonder Trend 6 – Interesting Missions – Street Racing, Mafia Wars, Mobsters 2, Hero World, Sorority Life (mini games)
• @bonder Trend 7 – Gift Invites – Green Patch, Farm Town, Farmville, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Sorority Wars etc (it works!)
• @bonder Trend 8 – Donations – Mouse Hunt
• @bonder Trend 9 – Virtual Items – Mafia Wars, Street Racing, Vampire Wars, Pet Society – lots of opps to innovate here &gift invites
• @bonder Trend 10 – Friends – Crazy Planets, Mafia Wars
• @bonder Trend 11 – Social Games and iPhone – Word Fu (Twitter, email, FB Connect), Drop 7
• @bonder Trend 12 – Using Social Net Data – Photo Grab
• @hirson tips for fb game success – pt 1 1. Make it fun 2.make it social 3. Think Service, not product 4. Measure everything
• @hirson tips for fb games success pt 2 – 5. Design for sharing 6. Build your footprint 7. Tailor monetization mix. 8. No spam.
• @hirson last tips for fb games. 9 use fb resources (verified game and dev garage) and 10. Be a good citizen.
• @mikesego Over 9.7 million users played a farm sim game (Farmville, Farm Town, Barn Buddy) yesterday on Facebook
• @mikesego At Gareth’s talk – More people play games on Facebook than any other site on the web. True.
• @jewlish Wii Mii’s came from Japanese wooden Kokeshi dolls.
• @NicoleLazzaro Instead of modeling breeds Nintendogs modeled the most important relationship: btwn the owner and dog.
• @NicoleLazzaro Nintendo keynote: In 2.5 yrs console and handheld market increased by 30 million players.
• @jmwhite2: 300 new games released per day on the iPhone – 20% of all apps are games – dean takahashi

From 2009-07-22

• @albertsupdates: “3 min user experiences are too long, 90 seconds (engagement cycles) is more optimal (on iphone)”
• @albertsupdates Episodic content the future of iPhone games — are there parallels on Facebook?
• @Jeff Shervin’s stats: Saturday peak days for installs, 25K to $40K daily installs for top paid games (= $250K/day for a $10 game)
• @GameAddict Interesting numbers about ipod touch making up 30% – 50% of game sales from the panel sales
• @katelollar 25% of all iPhone games are updated each month
• @Jeff Bart shares a couple of updated stats on Tapulous: 15M users after a year, half a billion Tap Tap Revenge games played
• @Jeff AppStore: 68,000 apps, 1.5 billion downloads, 20% of apps = games. Bart points out that apps’ installed base is typically 40/50% iPod Touch
• @GameAddict Dave Roberts of Popcap: “13% of the market is paying for 65% of the games sales.” 13% = 14 – 24 y.o. Males
• @gamesdotcom 13% of the population (14-34 men) drives the retail game business. Casual games are after the other 87%
• brodiegames Day 2 #casualconnect. Enjoyed Arthur’s (@LastDayOfWork) talk. Takeaway: brand building around innovation can win vs high output/low quality.
• @GameAddict 300 game submissions for mochi coins since yesterday’s announcement by Mochi Media.
• @johnhcook: Is advertising dead as a business model for games? “No it just sucks right now,” says RealNetworks’ Dan Prigg
• @johnhcook MSFT’s Hegenderfer at#casualconnect: No Zune phone coming.
• albertsupdates FB Game Templates Poke/WallApps > MobGames > FarmeGames — What is the next template? Are template going to keep working?
• johnhcook Hegenderfer of MSFT’s Windows Mobile on app stores: “Anyone who thinks Apple is going to run this thing is sadly mistaken.”
• albertsupdates “v1.0 of marketplace launching nxt week”-steve/group manager, windows mobile| does anyone care? or is it a greenfield?
• @lisaopolion Trends in casual online game – Thibaut from Gametap, “casual could become the #1 game genre within 6 mos”
• gamesdotcom Metaboli.com is learning what casual game portals always knew. The audience plays a HELL of a lot! Casual most played
• @albertsupdates: “Apple iTunes/Appstore is the new carrier deck” -still sucks w/o strong alternative (social) distribution
• Kontagent Mindjolt is #7 app: aggregation of games w/ a social wrapper.Whos next to ship something similar from casual game pubs?
• albertsupdates Thought: 5 stages of game distribution/evolution: box>downloads>flash>social>social/mobile; Can all survive/prosper?
• @GameAddict: Greg Ballard , CEO Glu Mobile: “there are too many games in the App store and may follow the Atari disaster.

From 2009-07-23

• @albertsupdates Focus on 2 Numbers – “Avg. Revenue Per User,” and “Avg. Revenue Per PAYING User
• @RealTweeter Is wellness gaming the next big casual games trend
• @dwlt NPD: “33% upgrade from free to paid games on iPhone”
• @georgebray NPD: Gamers spend avg $7 on iPhone games in last 3 months
• @Kontagent: IMO: 3 metrics: 1. ARPU, 2. Churn & also 3. (v)CAC: (viral) Customer Acqusition Costs
• @Kontagent 2 years it took Zynga to get to ~$100M+ from $0; How many years does it take traditional co’s to build a MMO?
• albertsupdates EngagedConf is now going to be hosted next to toyfair – Why? Because VirtualWorlds+BrandedToys = BigTime; Webkins=#1 toy
• ElaineChase Casual mmos as loss leaders when used as marketing for a bigger property = tough market place for making them a business
• albertsupdates “MTV has been the most prolific publisher of casual MMOs of anyone in the industry” – Ralph Koster
• dwlt Koster – Casual & VWs should learn from AAA industry and avoid becoming too enamored with tech
• georgebray NPD: 25% of online game players use a console. 59% of gamers use a console, 39% on PC and 35% use game websites
• GameAddict NPD: The most notable changes are increase in women console gamers and decrease amount willing to pay for microtransactions
• jmwhite2 NPD session – more people playing online educational games than online shooters. (26 pc vs 23 pc).
• GameAddict NPD: Card/puzzle/arcade/word games are dominating the casual space with 56% of the market for online gaming.
• GameAddict NPD: $701 mill in Retail PC, $740 mill in subscriptions, and $425 mill in PC Digitial dl’s in 2008.
• GameAddict NPD Video games sector is the ony category of entertainment to grow in 08′, 33% of entertainment dollars towards gaming
• GameAddict NPD: Kids lesiure time. Video Gaming and computer use have increased but only by 1 or 2 percent in 2 years
• @GameAddict 90% of the revenue comes from virtual goods at QQ
• GameAddict 6 million users on the casual side of QQ. (me: I totally wish more devs looked at asia for advice and tips. They’re on fire.)
• @albertsupdates Game industry has always been highly fragmented, any market leader (i.e EA) has less than 20% marketshare
• albertsupdates Game Publishers Focused on “Launch” and “Pushing Users Over $50 Barrier” vs. Social: Virality opt.&commnity building
• ElaineChase “When NEuropean business does’t know if they can do something they say “no, we can’t” US defaults to “sure, we can do that”
• albertsupdates Mobile Games 1.0 = BizDev Competitive Advantage; Mobile 2.0 = Content; Mobile Games 3.0 = Social Distribution IMO
• chriscummings01 Think about this: Tencent in China has 6M simultaneous players at peak; in Q1’09 did $360M gross rev (90% from virtual goods)
• ElaineChase Swoopo has a ridiculously brillant & evil buisness model based on the premise that humans as a group act stupidly
• getgambit The ideal competitive model = users who win want to keep playing, and users who lose want to keep playing (until they win)
• MargaretWallace Nuff said: (Tim) Chang: VC’s are devil-avoid us at all cost. Make it so they call you and want to invest in you.
• lisaopolion Tim Chang “Content is king, but distribution will be God”
• GameAddict Chang: Casual 3.0 will be 3d, streaming gaming, cloud gaming (same game on different devices), virtual currency exchange.
• GameAddict Chang is using the analogy of dance clubs as game business models. Velvet ropped areas easy to see and people pay to get in
• chriscummings01 “Pitching a VC today? No faster track to the recycle bin than anchoring your business model to advertising.” – Tim Chang
• @chriscummings01 “From a VC perspective, survival is the new growth.” – Tim Chang, Norwest

Blog coverage

• Elastic life: Casual connect & Social games love
• Gamezebo: Nintendo’s keynote
• Gamezebo: Finding success on the Facebook platform
• Venturebeat: Big Fish Games strikes a deal to develop games for People.com
• InsaneMission: Social games today are a gigantic #fail
• FreeToPlay.Biz: Designing, Balancing and Maintaining virtual economies (Great coverage!)

From 2009-07-22

• GameZebo: PopCap CEO praises cross-over games
• GameZebo: The Fatal Flaws of Flash Game Design
• GameZebo: What’s in a name?
• The Real Story: Social Gaming: a New Frontier
• Games.com: What will online games look like in a year? Three trends from Casual Connect
• TechCrunch: iPhone’s competitor’s have a big problem – their games stink
• Edge: Gamers are casual too
• Edge: The underdog panel
• CasualGaming.biz: Opinion: Casual Connects
• FreeToPlay.biz: Finding fatal flaws: Lessons from Kongregate (great, raw notes)

From 2009-07-23 and later

• GameZebo: How Corpse Craft turned RTS casual
• GameZebo: Building strong brands in a storm of competition
• GameZebo: Top 12 social gaming trends
• The Real Story: Wellness Gaming: an emerging trend
• Edge: iPhone crashes the party
• Edge: The Social Game revenue machines
• Ada Chen’s blog: Casual Connect 2009 Recap and Observations
• Untold Entertainment’s blog: Trendspotting at Casual Connect 09
• Inside Social Games: The power of show and tell
• VentureBeat: Party Crashers! iPhone/social games make the old-guard casual game companies envious
• VentureBeat: Social games light the way for old-guar casual game makers
• MochiLand: The New Money – Emerging revenue channels for Flash games monetization
• Christopher Cummings: Casual Gaming Trends 2009 (on Slideshare)