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FACEBOOK HAS BEEN repositioning itself as a news portal recently with redesigned pages, changes to its news feed algorithm and its launch of Paper in the US, but it’s also finding success in games.
The site revealed that an average of 375 million people play Facebook-connected games like Candy Crush Saga each month – just under a third of the site’s 1.2 billion members – and the site and mobile apps send an average of 735 million referrals to games every day.
The findings came from an internal study the company ran in September, looking at how people play games through both the site and mobile apps.
Unsurprisingly, it found that the more opportunities you have to play a game, the more addicted you’re going to be. For example, mobile engagement for cross-platform players was 2.4 times the engagement of mobile only players, while desktop engagement for similar players was 1.5 times greater than desktop-only players.
It also found that these players were willing to spend more on in-app purchases as well with cross-platform players spending on desktop was 3.3 times greater than the revenue of desktop-only players.
For Facebook, this is great news as it’s has been pushing app advertisements, grouping a number of them together and allowing users to download them directly from its own app.
The site is also experimenting with different ways of sending notifications to both players and non-players. For those who are bombarded with requests from Candy Crush and the like, things aren’t going to get better as they will still be there, just phrased differently.
The company revealed the study at the Games Developers Conference (GDC), which is happening in San Francisco this week.
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Easy to decide who to cull these days? Game invites= bye bye
Im stuck on level 96… can anyone help… lmao
Spammed all my FB friends with Mafia Wars crap for months, and of course other apps, the last one was Candy Crush.
I’m finally happy to say I’m off the FB for now and hopefully for good. Major waste of time.
You can block yourself from receiving game invites from friends in settings on your Facebook homepage
Is it weird or sad or something that I’m not on Facebook and have no interest in it?
Nope. That’s your prerogative. What might be considered slightly weird or sad (and this seems to affect a whole range of people) is your need to tell us about your lack of interest in something.
It says a lot about humanity when the worst games are the most popular. Candy crush is all flashy lights and bright colours, hence why it is so popular. Sad really
I shall hold my hands up and admit that after many years of avoiding the bloody things i’m not addicted to ‘guess the emoji’, my sincere apologies to all my friends who have to suffer me posting looking for hints to solve words……The shame…
Yesterday I uninstalled Candy Crush saga after thinking about how much time I was spending on it. Totally addictive.
At times I do come very near to blocking people for sending games to me
Hurry and update Candy Crush app im finished
I unwittingly did this..
. Got numerous requests to play. Went slowly insane; removed apps from Facebook account. Happy now.. :)
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