Master Your Martial Arts Skills With King Of Kungfu

Grab your sword, equip your pet, and jump into the arena for some fully animated matches against fellow kungfu masters in Koramgame’s King of Kungfu Facebook app. The game involves creating a brightly-colored, anime-style avatar whose goal is to battle other players for honor, gold, and experience, leveling up and gaining skills in order to become the King of Kungfu in the daily tournaments. Koramgame does a good job of incorporating an element of chance and luck into the player versus player battles, so that even a level ten player challenging a level fifteen or twenty isn’t counted out until the final blow.
The good

King of Kungfu has a variety of elements that keeps players checking in every day, but it remains casual and not overly time-consuming. Beginning at your dojo, you can check out your weapons stock and your skills, equip the pets you want fighting by your side, and read any of the latest activity. You can also grab bonuses, like daily experience. The shop is available for anyone with enough honor points to purchase weapons upgrades, new skills, pets, or change outfits. Then, it’s onto the arena for some battles. You start each day with a maximum of six battles, and you can gain more after resting in a friend’s dojo. After using up your battles, you can do a maximum of two daily quests and register for the King of Kungfu Cup. All-in-all, it takes about ten to fifteen minutes a day to complete the daily activities, which makes this a condensed, engaging experience.
The battles themselves are the highlight of this game. Once you choose your opponent, you can watch a beautifully animated battle, fully fleshed out with special moves like Bull Rush, unique pet attacks, and critical hits that decimate your opponent’s health bar and disarm their weapon. When your character is victorious, you’ll be treated to a speech bubble that boldly proclaims, “Envy my power, you whimp!” or “Burn, my vein!” - catch phrases that might’ve lost a little something in translation, but the tough-guy sentiment remains.

The bad
Upgrading and gaining new skills can be difficult, especially as you get into the higher levels. Koramgame has incorporated a Gold/Honor points system, with Gold being purchased virtual currency and Honor being earned by doing quests and winning tournaments in-game. Earning Honor points is time-consuming, as players can earn about six to ten per day, on average, and most skills and weapons upgrades in the shop cost between fifty to two hundred points. This means it can take several weeks to save up for that premium Dragon Wave skill or the coveted gold trident. To purchase a two hundred Gold item costs 20 USD, which is out of the price-range for most players expecting their virtual currency dollars to stretch a little further than a single item.
The verdict
This is a simple, fun game for anyone looking for a few minutes a day of role playing as a kungfu master. It has a nice interface, great graphics, and a unique battle system that incorporates luck into your character’s skills and weapons. Although it can be tough to gain Honor or Gold to purchase items, this doesn’t impede the main gameplay. All-in-all, this is an enjoyable game that has the potential for further social elements that is great for the casual player.
You can play King of Kungfu here.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com/

Target Donates $1 Million To Educational Causes On Facebook

Target’s Super Love Sending Facebook campaign has now come to an end and $1 million was donated to the winning charities. Target launched the marketing campaign with a philanthropic twist at the start of this month. The company decided to theme the campaign around Valentine’s Day and the Super Bowl. Participants had the option to vote for their favorite charity, if they send a customized video card to their friends – thereby making the campaign grow virally.The campaign lasted for two weeks and enabled Target to reach more than 900,000 facebook fans, who together sent out 26,000 Valentine’s Day and Super Bowl themed cards to friends and family.
Target’s Charity Giveaway is different from the Chase Community Giveaway in a sense that Target will be splitting the donation between the five selected charities on the basis of the votes that they received during the campaign. The Chase Community Giveaway on the other hand allowed users to vote for the charity of their choice, and donated $1 million to the charity that received the most votes. Further more, unlike Target’s campaign, the Chase Community Giveaway had a list of 1,000 charities to vote for.
Target will distribute the $1 million to the five charities as follows:
Kids In Need Foundation – 12 percent of votes = $120,000
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital® – 49 percent of votes = $490,000
The Salvation Army – 8 percent of votes = $80,000
United Through Reading® Military Program – 22 percent of votes = $220,000
United Way – 9 percent of votes = $90,000
Target selected all the 5 charities, due to their work in the area of education. St. Jude, the charity that received the most funds, will be using the money to support the hospital’s groundbreaking research and lifesaving care, including The St. Jude School Program – that is specially granted by Target. Target’s campaign is yet another example of brands using Facebook to launch marketing and brand building campaigns, that also aim to support charitable causes.

Mob The Rainbow And Send Valentines On Facebook

Crowdsourcing online is nothing new. Every social voting site and its cousins crowdsource content moderation. You can also use the Internet to crowdsource advice, non-profit donations, movie funding, movie content, “flash mobs” (though that’s usually through text messaging) and more. Now, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, makers of Skittles candies, wants to crowdsource the digital equivalent of random acts of kindness. They’re trying to leverage Facebook’s huge user base to “cause some fun,” via their Mob the Rainbow Facebook application and campaign.Skittles’ plan: to leverage the power of crowdsourcing and have monthly missions that anyone on Facebook (not just the 3.7+ million Skittles Fan Page fans) can participate in and collectively take positive action in the real world. The very first mission for the Rainbow Mob: Crowdsource kindness in the form of real Valentine’s Day cards to someone unsuspecting. In this case, the plan is to send thousands of Valentines to a Parking Enforcement Officer (aka Meter Maid) somewhere in the USA, with the blessing of her employers. At the time of this writing, there are already over 21,000 Valentine’s Day cards waiting to be delivered to a person who has a work day “full of insults.” (Good luck reading them all, whomever you are.) The delivery of the cards will be filmed and the footage later posted on Facebook (presumably somewhere on the Skittle’s Facebook Fan page).
If you’re on Facebook and want to participate in the Valentine’s Day mission, you can use the “Mob the Rainbow” tab on the Skittles Facebook fan page. These missions are going to be a regular monthly event, so don’t forget to check back regularly to see what’s new and also the results of previous missions. The Facebook application itself is made with the help of Involver and their platform, which offers a suite of marketing tools for integration with Facebook Fan pages.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

Google Declares War On Facebook With Google Buzz

While it was expected that Google would use Gmail accounts as the center of users’ social graphs, the new Google Buzz makes it pretty obvious. Will Google eliminate Twitter or Facebook with this new service? Definitely not, however if you exchange emails with the majority of your contacts, Gmail could become a more efficient conversation aggregator. The one problem with Google Buzz will be the issue of combining email overload with social content overload.Google Buzz already integrates with Google Latitude to immediately integrate location aware features. Also included with Google Buzz is a mobile version which looks almost identical to Facebook’s existing mobile application. This makes it clear that Google’s new service is not an attack on Twitter but instead a powerful attack on Facebook.
Google Takes On Facebook
With email as your inbox (rather than Facebook’s existing messaging system and future mail product), Google already has one advantage over Facebook. Additionally, Google calendar serves as a tool for tracking all of your events, rather than having to integrate with Facebook’s existing events product. I have to admit that the new Buzz product is pretty enticing.
While I’m not leaving Facebook anytime soon, the fact that Gmail already has a large number of my contacts means that there is little barrier to getting started: I already have the majority of my contacts listed. While not all my contacts use Gmail, a large number of them are already using the service. Given that Google’s additional applications (Gmail, Calendar, etc) are already more powerful than Facebook’s, this is a shot across the bow of Facebook.
While I don’t see Facebook traffic declining anytime soon, Facebook will be forced to rapidly improve their product offering if they are going to compete with Google’s powerful new Buzz product. The fact that there’s also location aware features directly in Google Buzz means that Google just one-upped Facebook, who has yet to integrate location features

The Secret Reason You Won’t Be Able To Quit Farmville

It started out innocently enough. After a long day of classes, I thought that I deserved some downtime. And since my friends and family had been raving out this “Farmville” for weeks now, I thought I would join in and see what all the fuss was about. Little did I know that by clicking “Allow” on Farmville’s “Allow Access?” page, my life would take a sharp right turn into the depths of obsession.I quickly grew my six beginner plots and 300 coins into a bustling farm fully equipped with chicken coop, dairy farm, a grove of multi-colored trees and a wild variety of playful animals. I had to check on my farm at least twice a day, to make sure my crops didn’t wither. My wall filled up with notices of lost animals, golden eggs, and a rainbow of ribbons and level achievements. I was getting a handful of bonuses from my friends every day, but after a huge level gain and then plateau, that simply wasn’t enough.
I began frequenting the unofficial Farmville groups and pages, like “FARMVILLE “ADD & INVITE” ADD NEIGHBORS EVERY DAY !”, posting my plea for more neighbors. As the friend requests poured in, my mind worked to translate each new person into bonuses for my farm: that level 35 farmer would surely find golden eggs to share with me; the crop-loving farmer will have plenty of plots for me to fertilize for experience and coins; the daily farmer will send me lots of new animals and trees as gifts. Before I knew it, I had added over 100 complete strangers to Facebook.
These people were all on a friends list that limited their access to my information, so it really wasn’t a big deal. It’s all part of the game. You add people, get their bonuses, and share yours with them. I look back now, and realize I was in denial.
After a few days of glorious golden egg bounties and an inbox full of gifts, I realized that my Facebook Requests were in the triple digits, and 9 out of 10 were from this horde of Farmville “Friends”. Slightly panicked about the “Ignore” click-work ahead of me, I looked to my news feeds to find out what my real friends were up to instead. But here, too, was a spammy mess of cute little animals looking for a home, Rare Black Mystery Eggs, and fertilizer requests. Suddenly everywhere I looked on my Facebook page was a barrage of Farmville bonuses just waiting to be scooped up – and that’s when I realized I had a problem.
It took me a few days to come to terms with the fact that I had to quit… I had to quit cold turkey. I had to just cut my ties with Farmville completely, or else any real connections I had on Facebook would be lost. I would especially miss the little pink cottage area that I built, complete with pink cherry trees and purple plumb trees lining the brightly colored garden, and a front yard full of black, white, tabby, and grey cats. Maybe this was my dream country home, but I remembered that I had two real cats waiting for me to feed them downstairs, and clicked the “X” beside the application. It was all gone.
Over the next few days, I would slowly go through my friends list and delete anyone I had recently added during my Farmville obsession days. I cleared out my requests, and soon my Facebook was back to basics. No more Farmville. I now knew why it gained in popularity so quickly to become the top App on Facebook. I had been through the fire, and came out stronger on the other side.—Three days ago, I added Farmville to my account again. They started a Valentine’s Day event! You get cute little bears and cards from your friends, and if you collect enough, you can trade them in for limited edition gifts. I tell myself I just want to see these gifts and then I’ll get rid of it again. But the best way to get more Valentines is to add more Farmville friends…

Facebook Chat Now Available On 400 Million Desktops

Facebook Chat’s integration with AOL’s AIM was not a one off event, rather a part of something bigger. As of today, Facebook Chat is now available “everywhere” (including desktop apps). In order to accomplish that Facebook has implemented the Jabber XMPP protocol, which is an open messaging protocol that is supported by most instant messaging softwares, including iChat, Pidgin, Adium, Miranda – and yes Google Talk also supports the same Jabber XMPP protocol.
So all users need to do now is to integrate Facebook Chat with any of their preferred instant messaging desktop client, and start using Facebook Chat right from your desktop. Doing so is simple and painstakingly easy, all you need to do is to connect your Facebook account with the instant messaging client that you are using – and that’s it, you are good to go.
The one thing that needs to be mentioned here is that you wont be able to create separate Friend’s List from your desktop client. If you want to do so, you would have to go to Facebook.com. Although I would have love to have the ability to create separate lists right from the client, I would be happy with what I am getting at the moment.
Some additional features that would make me jump include the ability to change my status on Facebook right from my Desktop Client, upload photos from the desktop client to my profile, comment on the status messages of my friends from my client and other such niceties.
I don’t know if all these additional features could be supported by every desktop client out their in the wild, or if that’s possible with the XMPP protocol at all. But as far, as I am concerned – I just want a fully functional desktop client to help me keep up with my social life on Facebook.
Facebook has also built the support for Facebook Chat into Facebook Connect, so developers who want to build chat experiences into their blogs, websites etc could do so.
All in all this is one giant assault by Facebook to reach the desktop of millions of Facebook users.

Facebook Surpasses 100 Million Mobile Users

Facebook has hit another important milestone, the social networking giant now has more than 100 million mobile users. Facebook’s mobile user base has almost doubled in less than six months, as it had around 65 million mobile users in Sep, 2009.
The current mobile growth rate is spectacular in a sense that Facebook is adding mobile users even faster than it is adding web users. Facebook had around 300 million users in Sep, 2009 – which has increased to 400 million users – an increase of 25%. However, the mobile user base has increased by almost 53% in the same time period.
Facebook’s mobile offering supports all major device manufacturers including Nokia, Android, Windows Mobile, Sidekick, Blackberry, INQ, Sony Ericsson, Palm and the iPhone. In addition to this Facebook is being used across all major operators across the world.
Facebook’s announcement further points out that the company has redesigned the mobile sites m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com to enable users to access Facebook from any mobile browser in more than 70 languages. In addition to this, Facebook now handles text messages from more than 80 operators in 32 countries.
Facebook’s announcement corroborates Opera’s recent survey results. Opera’s survey findings showed that Facebook’s mobile usage on Opera Mini mobile browser increased by around 619% in 2009 alone.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com/

Can You Get More Facebook Fans Than A Celebrity?

Whether it’s pickles, onion rings, sausages, or purple monsters, the latest Facebook meme attempts to drive more fans to Facebook Pages than to celebrity pages. While this tactic has been used for Facebook groups for some time, the volume of new Pages dedicated to arbitrary objects that have successfully attracted hundreds of thousands or a million fans has increased dramatically in the past couple days.Two weeks ago, the creator of the page “Can this purple monster i made on paint get more fans than the president?” reached out to us about his Page. At the time, we thought little of it because to be honest, the purple monster wasn’t that appealing. However, the page has now attracted over 650,000 fans and once it surpasses 1 million, Hot Topic has agreed to sell a copy of the t-shirt in their stores.
While I’m not sure that the creator of this Page was the person who originated the meme, it’s clear that the trend has taken off. Now there are numerous groups which are attempting to do the same thing (some of which have already succeeded):
Can this Onion Ring get more fans than Justin Bieber - 2,184,398 fans
can this sausage roll get more fans than cheryl cole? - 832,317 fans
Can this purple monster i made on paint get more fans than the president? - 655,000 fans
Can this Sexy Potato get more fans than Miley Cyrus? - 458,699 fans
Can this pickle get more fans than Nickleback? - 288,162 fans
Can this Pickle get more fans than Twilight? - 273,188 fans
Can this Troll Doll get more fans than Jonas Brothers? - 58,092
You can view all of the similar pages here. While we aren’t sure who the administrators of these various Pages are, there’s no doubt that this trend has gone viral. So far Facebook hasn’t prevented any of these Pages from posting updates but my guess is that after thousands of copycats begin popping up, many people will have their Pages disabled.
Are you a fan of any pickles, onions, purple monsters, or other random items?

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

Coca Cola To Use Virtual Goods On Facebook For Super Bowl Promotion

Coca Cola is planning to run a social media campaign on Facebook during the Super Bowl, that would coincide with its advertisements in Cable TV, according to a web cast news conference by Coca Cola executives on Wednesday. This follows Pepsi who previously announced their intention to remove all SuperBowl ads and opt entirely for social media channels.Coca Cola’s campaign on Facebook will combine the usage of virtual goods with philanthropy. Fans of Coca Cola’s fan page “Live Positively” would be able to send out virtual gifts to their friends or family in return for a 20 second sneak peak at one of the two scheduled Coca Cola Super Bowl Commercials on CBS. As for the gift recipients, they would see an image of Coke bottle on their Facebook pages and news feed. Coca Cola will be using the proceeds from the campaign to donate a dollar to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, for every gift sent out during the campaign.
Coca Cola’s social media marketing campaign will run in parallel with their more traditional Cable TV commercials. Coca Cola has bought spots to run two commercials on CBS during Super Bowl XLIV on Feb. 7.
Speaking during the webcast Katie Bayne, chief marketing officer for the Coca-Cola brand in North America, said that the philanthropic element in the Facebook campaign reflects upon Coca-Cola’s longtime corporate philosophy of “doing a little good while refreshing people”. She further added that the effort also further highlights the Coca-Cola campaign on Facebook, whereby they have named their fan page “Live Positively”.
Pepsi Cola decided to stay away from Cable advertising during this year’s Super Bowl, and would instead be focusing on their “Pepsi Refresh Project”, which is primarily a digital media advertising campaign. The central theme of the Pepsi Refresh Project is to make donations to organizations as selected by consumers.
The marketing and brand building campaign by Coca Cola highlights the ever growing importance of Social Media. It further shows that large organizations like Coca Cola are now increasingly shifting their ad dollars towards Digital Media.
Another beneficiary of this campaign would be the virtual goods market segment. Campaigns like these further demonstrate the increasing dominance of virtual goods over other methods of reward during campaigns on Social Media sites.

Social Game Preview – Mafia Wars: Bangkok

With the Friday release of Mafia Wars Bangkok looming, we were pleased when Zynga extended a few early-access passes to preview the game. Mafia Wars, one of the most popular applications for Facebook at 25,000,000 MAU, has been a success for Zynga ever since it’s release. It was one of the first applications on Facebook to reportedly earn a serious revenueMafia Wars Bangkok will be the 3rd expansion after Cuba (at level 35) and Moscow (at level 70), and features the innovative ability to choose from two separate gangs, the Yakuza and the Triad. This mechanic is similar to choosing between the Mafiya and Thieves in Law in the Moscow expansion.
Surprisingly, a level-cap is not the requirement to gain access into the Bangkok expansion, this time. Players must acquire three key items from the New York area to proceed. I won’t give away the specifics on the items, but it is not a difficult goal to achieve, and surely the Mafia Wars discussion boards may offer a tip or two.
Your first decision will be to choose which faction you plan to support. The two choices – Yakuza and Triad – have unique job trees and abilities that they can earn. This is a new dynamic for Mafia Wars and the main contribution of this new expansion. However, the interesting element here is that you align with a faction by choosing specific jobs that support the faction. As you do this, your respect with that faction goes up (and sometimes angers the opposing faction). You get bonuses within each faction for rising, but also get bonuses for being well-liked by both. It’s an interesting trade-off.
As you complete certain jobs and win fights against rival faction members in Bangkok, you’ll earn increased respect from the faction you help out. Earn enough reputation, and you’ll unlock special items that can be purchased in theFaction Store.
However, helping one faction is sure to anger the other – keep in mind that as your status with one faction goes up, the other faction will drop. Drop below a certain level and that faction may cut off access to items in the store.
Rumors have been swirling that a Las Vegas addition is coming soon, although there have been no official announcements to back that up. That said, judging by the continued success, there’s no doubt that Mafia Wars will continue to expand. The question is whether Playfish’s brand new Gangster Wars game, with its high production values, will put pressure on the Mafia Wars audience.
Another thing I’m wondering about is how long until Facebook Credits appear as an option for my Godfather points.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

Scam Facebook Groups Continue To Proliferate

One week ago we wrote about the rise of scam Facebook groups and as of today, these groups continue to proliferate. The groups encourage users to invite all of their friends in reward for an advanced feature on Facebook. Last week we wrote about one group which falsely claimed that you can change your Facebook “profile theme” by inviting all your friends. Today we were sent another which claims to let you find out who just visited your profile (found here).These groups are scams that are looking to take advantage of users and incent them to complete offers. Most often the offers are the IQ quiz scams that we’ve covered relentlessly over the past year. While many users attempt to create large Facebook groups for fun, these groups are created by individuals who are running a business. By enticing millions of users to join groups, the group administrators are able to convert a large enough percentage that the generate thousands of dollars at a time.
Sketchy Businesses
It’s a sketchy business and one that spread quickly within Facebook applications last year. These advertisers no longer need to invest development time in the system. Instead they can dupe users into filling out these offers in exchange for a false product. By definition it’s a fraud so we decided to look into this further. There appears to be supposed “hosting” companies which are created for the sole purpose of hosting lead offers.
They can then claim that “customers” are using their free hosting services and that their hosting company is generating their profit from advertising hosted on the site and within the control panels. That’s what one of the employees of the “hosting company” 000a.biz told us. When I jokingly referred to their company as having a great name, the individual on the line smugly laughed in response.
As far as we’re concerned, the company could be one of numerous shell hosting companies that can state they generate advertising revenue although not all of that revenue is tracked. While 000a.biz has legitimate sites that are hosted on their servers, there are numerous scams that are set up through this hosting company and their sister hosting companies.
While there’s no way to suggest that the hosting company and these scammers are directly connected, it’s pretty obvious that things don’t appear to be the most legitimate. Would scammers really fall for their own scam ads and generate enough revenue to support these “hosting” companies?
The Facebook Group Scams
For now, the scammers have found a way to use Facebook groups and Facebook pages as a tool for driving users to their landing pages (as pictured below). Facebook has been shutting down these groups as soon as they pop up but it’s extremely difficult to stop as they are created with fake Facebook accounts. My guess is that we’ll see more of these show up before Facebook completely clamps down on the problem.
If you want to protect yourself, don’t complete any offers. Also if there is a group which sounds kind of fishy, there’s a good chance it’s a scam.

New “Ex-Girlfriend” Worm Spreading Through Facebook

In the past hour I’ve noticed multiple users who have posted a message stating “My Ex-Girlfriend Cheated on me… Here is my revenge!” The image was not of their ex though. As a curious individual, I decided to click on the link to see if it was a virus or something else. The result was that I ended up posting the article to my profile and now it’s spreading around Facebook.The key here is to not click the link if you see it on your friends’ profile or on your homepage. By using some creative CSS and an iFrame, this developer has triggered the “share” event every time a person clicks on the image displayed on the page. It’s a really creative trick, and one that I’m sure Facebook will block in a short amount of time but you should definitely be aware of the issue. If you see an image like the one pictured below show up on your newsfeed or your profile: don’t click it!!

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

A Brief History Of Farmville

Farmville has become the most popular Facebook application ever created. How and why did this one game rise to such popularity amongst a sea of competitors? The truth is, Farmville has an interconnected past that dates back to the initialization of the Facebook Application Developer platform. Learn how FarmVille rose to become a cultural phenomenon.
Introduction to Facebook Games
In the months after the launch of the Facebook Application Developer platform in May 2007, hordes of developers from around the world worked tirelessly around the clock to develop applications that engaged the rapidly growing Facebook user-base, and the creativity that stemmed from those applications lives on today. “Poke”-style apps, music apps and dating applications ruled the charts. Games were in their infancy, but game ideas like Mob Wars claimed early leads. These were games based heavily on statistics and text-based activities.
(Lil) Green Patch
Enter (Lil) Green Patch, a game about growing your small garden by sending and receiving Garden-based utilities. The game was simple, with all actions revolving around selecting items at a store, clicking to send, and receiving text feedback about the results. In early 2008, the game had 350,000 Daily Active Users and was in the top 15 Facebook Applications. The gameplay was simple, and the graphics considered primitive. Working in the Social Games industry at the time, most analysts understood that this was something akin to the Atari before the NES - The game ideas were present, but a graphics overhaul would revolutionize the market. Furthermore, Facebook applications have repeatedly demonstrated transience in their popularity, and are usually uprooted by an improved version of their basic game engine. This occured with the transition from Mob Wars to Zynga’s Mafia Wars and would likely happen with the gardening/farming genre.
Slashkey’s Farm Town
In early 2009, Slashkey developed a game called “Farm Town”, where you grow a farm by sending and receiving gifts to other farmers, with the purpose of designing and maintaining a farm. The core gameplay engine was very similar to that of (Lil) Green Patch, but the graphic interface was completely overhauled. With a full, customizable animated avatar moving around the screen and physically cropping and harvesting, the game had a ‘virtual world’ feel to it, and was in fact accused of stealing the graphic style from Zynga’s YoVille. The game was initially released privately to 12 people. The app went from ” 12 users to 3 million users, with 1 million users playing in a day”, and when it was released to the public Application Directory in June, debuted at #4 out of all Facebook applications.
Zynga Releases Farmville
In June 2009, a few months after Farm Town rose to its popularity and just after it released to the public Application Directory, Zynga launched FarmVille. The game had a nearly identical graphical layout and the same play pattern. The game had a few key improvements to gameplay that facilitated a quicker, easier play session for users. The graphics and more elegant experience, FarmVille Coins and Farmville Cash currencies made the game a more linear and understandable progression than its predecessor. That said, Farm Town maintained a high level of social interaction, with various ‘meeting places’ available to chat within the game.
Inevitably, the game itself was excellent, but it was Zynga’s massive existing user-base across its other games and advertising spend that allowed it to really drive significant traffic to Farmville. Zynga announced it was gaining 1 million players per week, and quickly surpassed the 10 m Daily Active Users mark by August, breaking it into the top 20 . The game has continued its meteoric rise and is still growing, with a current user-base of 74 million Monthly Active Users, with 27 million Daily Active Users .
Controversies
There have been a few controversies with Farmville, with many accusing the company of scamming users with its offer system. Zynga took a financial hit to remedy this, with GM Bill Mooney announcing that “First we turned everything off, went through and cleaned out offers that we had concerns about that provided a bad user experience, and we’re working basically to improve the quality of those offers”. There have also been the inevitable comparisons to FarmTown, which looks and plays nearly identically to FarmVille. This has not amounted to legal action, and the truth is that the entire Facebook application world walks a fine line between imitations, iterations and plagiarism - Most games have other games that they have borrowed from, but very often the popular games are the ones that iterate and respond to their users better.
Conclusion
Zynga’s Farmville, like many Facebook applications, borrows a lot from its predecessors. That said, the game is a phenomenon that attracts players of all demographics, and keeps them engaged. It’s growth continues to rise, and the game continues to innovate. Most recently, we can see that Farmville is about to integrate with the Facebook credits system. This could mark an even more striking turning point, as the barrier to making microtransactions is reduced even further, and the profitably of the application could increase.

Facebook Investors Have No Plans For A 2010 IPO

With millions in the bank from a recent investment by DST and a cash-flow positive business, Facebook has no plans to go public in 2010. That’s the latest information from Facebook investor and board member, Jim Breyer, who was speaking at the DLD Conference in Munich Germany. Highlighted by Johannes Kleske of the conference, Breyer stated “We are not planning a near term IPO (near term as in 2010)”. Yuri Milner of DST followed on with, “We have permanent capital, we don’t have to return money to investors so we can go long term. So we’re not planning our exit”.While many individuals were expecting the company to go public later this year, the new DST investments have helped “tide” the company over. Zynga, the largest developer on the Facebook Platform, also accepted a large investment ($180 million) from DST earlier this year, which means both companies don’t have an immediate need for going public.
This new investment model, which is being called “DST deals“, is enabling internet technology companies to mature further before going public. Not to mention that many investors may not understand Facebook’s virtual goods business model, which will become more significant over the coming months. Another interesting tidbit mentioned during the conference was Jim Breyer’s statement that he “doesn’t believe that Facebook or any other social network will approach Google’s efficiency when it comes to advertising.”
So for those of you who were looking to get invested in Facebook this year, it appears as though you’ll have to look to third party sellers through services like SecondMarket and private Facebook investment funds.
Breyer & Milner comments were first spotted by Rafat Ali.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

Fact: The Hundreds Of Facebook Friends You Have Aren’t Real

While it’s cool to show off that you have hundreds or even thousands of Facebook friends, the fact remains that the number is absolutely meaningless. Robin Dunbar, the Oxford Professor behind the original Dunbar number theory, is working on a new study to see if social networks have increased the size of our personal networks (as we postulated last June). The findings show that despite having numerous Facebook friends, “people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world”.While the findings aren’t exactly surprising, as it’s pretty well known that individuals don’t have the time to manage hundreds or thousands of friends, that Dunbar is the source of the new findings makes this significant. Another interesting finding was gender related: “There is a big sex difference though … girls are much better at maintaining relationships just by talking to each other. Boys need to do physical stuff together.”
There didn’t appear to be a distinction between age groups, however I’d guess that the soon to be released Dunbar report will have more information about various segments of the population. While Facebook users love to brag about the number of friends they have, or use the number as a source of confidence, the study confirms that the number is pretty much insignificant.
If you find that maintaining numerous relationships can be stressful, it’s not a personal problem. The fact is that your brain simply can’t manage an excessive number of relationships. So when your friend starts bragging to you about how many Facebook friends they have, just tell them that Dunbar (an Oxford professor) says their friend count doesn’t matter at all.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

Lily The Black Bear Gives Birth Live In Front Of Facebook Fans

Lily – the black bear, has become a Facebook sensation after a cam was installed in her den on January 8, 2010 - so that researchers and fans could monitor her hibernation. Lily’s Facebook Page has amassed more than 64,000 fans in less than two weeks.Lily gave birth to a healthy cub on Friday in front of thousands of wild life enthusiasts – who were watching live via the den cam. This has been the first time a bear giving birth has ever been recorded in the wild. The footage will be used by researchers in a new wild life series, “bearwalkers” – which would feature biologists doing hands on research with bears in the wild.
Dr Lynn Rogers, from the North American Bear Center is heading the den cam project. Rogers, who monitored every moment of Lily’s 21-and-a-half hour labor with colleague Sue Mansfield, expressed his views in the following words:
It was like she was having some contractions that were out of control. We were on edge because we want to see everything, and I mean every bout of labor and time it, and how long between labor sessions. This is an opportunity I’ve not had in my 43 years of research.
Lily, who weighs 200lbs, went into labor at 8pm GMT on Thursday and began slamming her body around the den, as thousands anxiously watched on. Her cub is perfectly healthy and was heard crying to Lily while she tried to calm it down.
Lily’s fans are monitoring each and every moment of the bear and cubs life and commenting on the fan page to let others know about it. One Lilly Fan commented:
CUBBY ALERT! I believe we did see cubby ? . For those who didn’t. Lil’ cubby seems to be tucked under lily’s hind leg upper front of screen, being ‘cupped’ by Lily’s front paw. When she moves, I think there’s a good chance you’ll get a peek because of where he is.
There is no shortage of gratitude and admiration for the researchers either, as one fan commented:
I have to admire and thank the researchers for allowing us to be part of Lily’s and her cub’s life by helping with the recording of their activities. They don’t have to do this, but, have witnessed from the thousands of viewers, a great love and respect for this project. Thank You so much
The biology of the black bear is still relatively unknown to scientists, as the bear is a loner and wanders in the forests. Previous such projects failed because the bears used to get disturbed by the peering cameras and used to abandon their lodgings.
Lily’s den is near Ely in Northeastern Minnesota, USA, less than 30 miles from the Canadian border. You can see here live on cam here and become a fan of her facebook fan page “Lily the Black Bear” to get updates about Lily and her cub.
With the “den cam” project, Facebook is not just about socializing with friends and family – you can now socialize with wild animals too.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

iHeart: 29 Million Users and Counting

When I first stumbled upon iHeart, I thought it was an early Valentine’s Day application, but upon closer inspection it’s the return of the “Poke” fad that used to dominate the top ten charts for Facebook Applications. Upon deeper inspection, iHeart is a tremendously simple ‘game’ that has found its casual audience in a world of more complex Facebook Applications.In iHeart, the concept is simple: you add the application, and then proceed send a variety of animated hearts to your friends. With each heart you send or receive, the faster your own animated heart will pump when you log in. That is the entire extent of gameplay in iHeart. There is no actual gameplay, no socializing, no monetization and no point other than to simply let your friends know you care with an animated heart. It’s hard to even consider this a game, as it’s more of a greeting-card style application.
I once derided these types of ‘Poke’ clone applications as superfluous, but the numbers don’t lie, and looking at iheart’s numbers we can see that it has immense popularity. I now feel that in the context of today’s application platform, iHeart demonstrates that there is a place for simplicity.
When we look at the top ten applications by visits, we can see that the most popular applications and games such as Mafia Wars or Cafe World have steadily been including more complex social elements. This is precisely what early application creators / reviewers (including AllFacebook) were hoping for years ago. As this has happened, there has also emerged a happy medium for super-hit games like Farmville, where the game mixes initial simplicity with a deeper potential for gameplay
The proliferation of such games has raised the awareness of the average Facebook user about the potential for Facebook Applications to actually be meaningful, entertaining content, rather than the simple “poke” applications of years past. That said, some of the new interest is from people who have no desire to engage with complex game mechanics.
For those people, the ‘poke’ game, disguised as iHeart, has returned. With its numbers, it is not only a simple quick diversion, but the most popular way that Facebook users can tell someone they care. The game is so popular that people that write enthusiastic reviews about it. It cuts into Facebook’s own ‘gifts’ market by being completely free, although I wouldn’t be surprised if iHearts begins to use the Facebook currency to attempt to monetize.
Another interesting question raised by the success of iHeart is why this particular application took off, but not Give a Heart, Messages from the Heart or any of the over 500 results that appear when you search applications for “heart”. There certainly is an element of timing and luck to the success of ‘poke’ style applications, but if iHeart teaches us any lesson, it’s that these types of applications have and will have a place for years to come.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

Dave Morin Leaves Facebook

Dave Morin, who first joined Facebook in 2006 to help with the launch of the Facebook Platform, is officially leaving the company to create a new startup with the creator of Napster, Shawn Fanning. This is a huge loss for Facebook, as he was one of the primary people who helped build the developer community since the platform first launched.Mark Zuckerberg has said on a number of instances that Facebook is looking to hire entrepreneurial individuals to come and build large products within the company and one day move on, which is exactly what Dave Morin will now be doing. Dave has also gained a lot of attention as he’s one of the primary “public facing” individuals at the company. It will be interesting to see who steps in to fill the void left by Morin.
Dave Morin previously started at Apple and serves as an advisor at Rupture and now the Denver tech startup incubator, TechStars. If you’re looking to keep up to date on the happenings of Dave you can follow his Twitter account or read his blog. Best of luck to Dave at his new startup!

Facebook Scammers Now Trying To Convert Groups Into Cash

Facebook scammers are getting pretty darn clever. The latest scam we’ve been sent is a false group which gets users to invite their friends and then complete offers before being awarded with a free pair of UGGs. What type of offers are being displayed? None other than the “high quality” IQ quizzes that we’ve covered extensively over the past year. There are currently two UGG boot giveaway groups and I can only imagine that there are numerous others just like them.
We recently covered the increasing volume of scam Facebook groups and it appears that the scams have now turned into revenue generators for some of the group administrators. One group, “UGG boots giveaway“, has attracted over 140,000 members in an effort to convince them that they will get free boots after completing various offers.
All these offers are currently being run through the site CPALead.com, however there isn’t necessarily a connection between the group owner and the offers provider. The greater issue here is that scammers are abusing the Facebook invite tool within groups and Facebook Pages since there are currently no limitations. This was an issue which Facebook applications previously experienced resulting in an eventual clamp down by Facebook.
While Facebook will most definitely shut down these groups in a short amount of time, I have a strong feeling that this isn’t the last notification we get of group administrators abusing the invite system. While this group may not have lasted more than a day, it has the potential to generate upwards of $100,000 if visitors to the site actually converted on any of the offers presented to them.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

Facebook Begins Building Its Own Data Centers

Rather than continuing with large leasing agreements as the company scales its user base, Facebook is deciding to develop their own data centers according to Rich Miller of Data Center Knowledge. The news comes at a time when Facebook is racing toward 400 million users. Given that the company has become “cash flow positive” and has more cash from the most recent DST investment, building their own data center makes more sense.While the new data center has not been confirmed, Rich Miller states that it could be confirmed today at noon (Pacific time), “when Oregon Gov. Ted Kulogonski is scheduled to unveil the identity of Company X, the mysterious tenant in a data center project in Prineville, Oregon.” The servers will utilize a new power distribution configuration, first revealed back in November.
How does this new power configuration compare to traditional ones? I have absolutely no idea as I’m not a server person, however the main point is that Facebook will experience substantial savings on their electricity consumption. It takes a substantial number of servers and energy to keep Facebook running from day to day which is the primary reason Facebook is beginning to manage their own.
The key to Facebook’s improved energy efficiency is related to its “UPS (uninterruptible power supply) System”. Rather than forcing all power through the UPS as it travels to servers, on-board batteries are used, resulting in major efficiency gains. According to Data Knowledge Center, this system was adopted from Google, who first announced the improved model last April.
According to Rich Miller the new data center will be run on hydro power which will also provide additional savings.
UpdateFacebook has posted more details about their new data center.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com

Based On Fans, FarmVille Now More Popular Than Michael Jackson

While Michael Jackson continues to reign as the most popular person on Facebook, FarmVille now has the largest fan base on the site. While the application was already the largest Facebook Platform application with almost 74 million monthly active users, it only recently surpassed Michael Jackson as the largest Page on Facebook with over 11 million fans. It’s not exactly a surprising metric considering the massive promotional vehicle the company has.In comparison to other applications though, FarmVille has a relatively high ratio of fans to active users. This is not by accident. As Facebook prepares to deprecate their notifications developers have been focused on driving users to other promotional channels. Over the past month there has been an increased focus on getting users to bookmark applications in addition to becoming fans.
While feed stories don’t typically reach a large percentage of fans, FarmVille only needs to reach a fraction of active users to have a large impact. The company’s new FarmVille podcast obtained over 220,000 views, which is incredible considering it was only posted via the application’s fan Page. Whether you are a celebrity, popular brand, or a large application, Facebook Pages are a great way to engage your fans, customers, or users.
Zynga has been focused on engaging their application users in multiple ways, something many other application developers fail to successfully execute.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com/

Again, Facebook Will Not Charge Users To Access The Site

The ongoing thread that Facebook will soon begin charging for their site doesn’t appear to be slowing. The other night I was having dinner with a family friend who told me about a scoop he had that Facebook would soon begin charging for the site and proceeded to explain why he would pay. While it’s great that Facebook has provided value to his life and millions of others, the company will not charge users to access the site.

Just two weeks ago we wrote that Facebook will not charge users, however millions of users continue to be deceived. One Facebook group, “300,000 MEMBERS NEEDED TO STOP FACEBOOK FROM CHARGING £/$14.99 A MONTH”, has successfully attracted over 474,000 users. Another group claims Facebook will begin charging on July 1st, but it’s a flat out lie used as a way to drive thousands of users to the group.
While Facebook has systematically shut down groups spreading this false information one at a time, I’d expect the company to create a filter to prevent these groups from being created in the first place. As I wrote in December, “Facebook didn’t become the most popular site in the U.S. on Christmas by charging for their service, and they aren’t going to become the largest site in the world by charging for their service.”
This is an ongoing rumor which Facebook continues to deny, stating that their service is ad supported. To all the users who think Facebook will start charging for their service, this article is for you. It never happened before, and while Facebook could generate billions by charging for their site, it’s not going to happen. All the groups stating that Facebook will charge are nothing more than flat out lies.

Source : http://www.allfacebook.com/

The Secret To How Facebook Makes Money

While most industry insiders have a firm grasp on Facebook’s monetization models, most people still don’t understand how Facebook makes money. For those that still don’t know how Facebook makes money, we thought we’d take the opportunity to break down Facebook’s various revenue streams including past and future streams of revenue. After reading this guide, you should have a complete understanding of how Facebook makes money.
Advertising Business
Facebook’s single most important revenue channel is advertising. The company has always been ad supported and most likely will always be ad supported. While some have claimed that Facebook will one day charge for access to the site, those rumors are completely false. Facebook generates over half a billion in revenue each year, the vast majority of which comes from advertising. So who is paying for advertising?

Self-Serve Facebook Advertising

The largest chunk of Facebook’s advertising revenue is the company’s self-serve advertising platform. By visiting the following page you can set up your own advertising campaign on Facebook. These advertisements are displayed in the sidebar of most pages of the site. That includes user profiles, events, groups, Facebook Pages, and third-party applications. The primary advantage of Facebook’s self-serve advertising platform is the granular targeting features.

Over the past few years Facebook has increased their targeting capabilities, including the ability to limit advertising to metropolitan areas as well as the following target variables: gender, age, network (workplace, school, etc), profile keywords, relationship status, and more. Facebook recently released the Facebook Ads API which provides large ad buyers with the ability to build robust ad managers on top of the Facebook advertising platform.

We’ve written about a number of companies who have built services on top of Facebook’s Ads API. To boil it down, the Facebook Ads API enables Facebook to reduce the amount of friction large advertisers (those who spend more than $10,000 a day) have in posting new advertisements and modify existing ones. According to numerous sources, Zynga, the developer behind the largest games on Facebook (FarmVille, Café World, etc), is the largest purchaser of Facebook’s self-serve ads.
Small businesses like doctors, lawyers, restaurants, and others are also responsible for a large amount of Facebook’s revenue generated by the self-serve advertising platform. If you want to learn more about Facebook’s self-serve advertising platform, check out some of the articles below. We expect Facebook to generate somewhere in the range of $450 million this year (2010) on self-serve ads.

Engagement Ads

In addition to Facebook’s self-serve advertising product, Facebook also generates a substantial percentage of their revenue through their “Engagement Ads” product. Engagement Ads are Facebook’s solutions for large brand advertisers. Facebook places all engagement ads on the site’s homepage. Once a user logs in, they can interact with advertisements (like to one pictured to the right) which are placed on the right-hand side of the homepage.
Facebook has been ramping up their efforts to recruit brand advertisers in a number of ways but last September Facebook stepped up their efforts with the launch of Brand Lift. Brand Lift is essentially a product which enables large brand to test the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns almost immediately after their campaign is run. Facebook believes this increased level of measurement will encourage brand advertisers to spend more on Facebook Engagement Ads.
If you want to learn more about the Engagement Ads product, you can check out the articles below. We expect Facebook to generate around $250 million in brand advertising this year.

Microsoft Banner Advertising Agreement & Search

Previously, Facebook had an advertising agreement with Microsoft for displaying large banner ads on the site. Recently, Facebook removed the advertisements internationally and it appears that they could be completely phased out of the site by the end of the first quarter this year, according to a Facebook presentation that was presented in Poland earlier this month. Facebook is phasing out the banner advertisements from Microsoft as they want to be completely self-sufficient. Total revenue generated from Microsoft advertising will be less than $50 million this year as they phase out banner ads completely.

Another less discussed agreement is the one Facebook has with Microsoft over search. When Microsoft invested $250 million in Facebook at a $15 billion valuation, part of the investment included an agreement to integrate Microsoft’s search results into Facebook. The terms of the agreement have never been public however we believe that Microsoft may be paying Facebook beyond the terms of the initial agreement. Unfortunately for estimate purposes we have to assume that this revenue is negligible although we believe it to be worth at least $150 million a year.

Virtual Goods And The Gift Shop

Facebook currently generates a large amount of revenue from the Facebook Gift shop. For those less familiar with the gift shop, it’s a product which enables users to send virtual gifts to one another. At an average cost of $1 per gift, Facebook gifts have become an extremely lucrative business, generating upwards of $100 million last year. Facebook has been slowly opening up the gift shop to third-party developers in order to increase the variety of products sold through the shop.

In August of last year, Facebook began opening the gift shop to non-profits and by September it was opened to a number of other developers. During the ongoing Haiti crisis, Causes has been offering users the opportunity to purchase gifts which directly benefit victims of the tragedy. While there are few public estimates of Facebook’s gift shop revenue, we’d expect Facebook to generate upwards of $150 million from their gift shop this year.

Facebook Credits

That last way Facebook generates revenue is through their Facebook Credits program. Initially used as a way for Facebook users to purchase virtual goods through the Facebook gift shop, Facebook is slowly opening up Credits to third-party developers. The purpose is for developers of applications, like FarmVille and other large social games, to integrate Facebook’s Credits product directly into their applications.

Facebook will in turn take a large percentage of all virtual goods sold through applications. As we wrote in our 2009 Facebook Recap, Facebook has been testing a number of ways to integrate Credits. In addition to testing out alternative payments for Credits for those users without access to credit cards, Facebook has been testing user-to-user credits as well as in-application credit integration.

Facebook is widely expected to release the Facebook Credits product for developers at this year’s f8 developer conference being held in San Francisco this April. While it will only begin rolling out later this year, we expect Facebook to generate $150 million in revenue from their Credits platform this year. This could expand up to a few hundred million in a short period of time as the volume of virtual goods sold on Facebook grows beyond $1 billion a year.

Conclusion

Facebook makes money a number of ways however advertising is the company’s revenue channel. With self-serve ads becoming a booming business for Facebook and with the growth of Engagement Ads, Facebook could be on track to generate up to $1 billion in revenue this year. While our estimate is aggressive, Facebook has been experiencing continued growth and through further education about the company’s advertising products, we’d expect Facebook to stay on track to almost double previously quoted estimates of last year’s revenue: $550 million.
While many users still wrongly think that Facebook will charge users because they aren’t able to pay for the site, the reality is that advertising is proving to be a very big business for Facebook.
Source : http://www.allfacebook.com/