When the Facebook platform launched over a year ago, many observers of the new platform quickly realized that gaming was quickly becoming one of the most popular category of applications on the site. What appeared to be revolutionary about this new series of games was the turn-based model that was seamlessly integrated into the Facebook experience.

Once other platforms launched, this “new” genre of games quickly followed. At the time, I think many people were simply amazed at the sheer number of users playing extremely simple games like “Scrabulous” (which was recently shut down). What many began to realize was an explosion of casual gaming through which I believe the awareness of each others’ gaming activities was a catalyst for.

More recently I’ve been wondering about the concept of a “social games” segment as part of the general gaming industry. Prior to sharing my personal thoughts on the matter, I thought it would be best to give a general overview of social games and the companies behind them.

What are Social Games?

Within months of the platform there was an explosion of “social gaming” and soon enough, many people (including myself) were convinced that social games were the next big thing on social networks. So what exactly makes a social game different from other games? I believe that there are a few factors which differentiate social games from the others:

• Turn-based - A social game is not social unless you are playing with another person. As such, social games enable users to take turns. Turn-based games are nothing new but in the current environment, turn-based takes on a new meaning. Keep in mind that turn-based is not a requirement, just a frequent feature found in “social games”.
• Awareness of others’ actions in games - I honestly believe this was the catalyst for “social gaming.” When you could see in your news feed that your friend just bit another one of your friends to turn them into a vampire, suddenly there was social context, making you more likely to interact with the game.
• Casual gaming - “Social gaming” is not really for so called “hardcore gamers”. As it is currently referred to, social gaming is for the average user and not for someone who plans on playing 24 hours a day. Then again, that may be an unexpected side effect.
• Multiplayer - This is a no brainer. You can’t be social without there being other people so whether it’s two or two hundred users, the game has to be multiplayer for it to be social.
• Based on Social Platforms - The final component that I believe typifies “social games” is that they are based around social platforms. In the context of social gaming, social platforms provide users with an identity and also can provide the backbone for simple forms of communication (such as notifications, etc).

So for the purpose of this article I’ll go ahead and put forth a definition of social games. As you will see toward the end of this article, there is still room for debate over whether or not such forms of classification are justified. So here is my best definition of social games:

Social games are a structured activity which has contextual rules through which users can engage with one another. Social games must be multiplayer and have one or more of the following features: turn-based, are based on social platforms for providing users with an identity and are casual.

What Are the Leading Companies Creating Social Games?

Since the launch of the Facebook platform a little over one year ago, a new set of companies have emerged to tackle the social gaming market. Each different in their approach, a number of companies have begun developing a wide range of games that target a broad audience of users. Below are a few of the leading companies that are involved in social gaming in one form or another. If I miss any, please feel free to let me know.

Zynga Gaming Network
I’ve written about Zynga a number of times on this blog. The company was started by Mark Pincus (who I previously did a podcast with) and really became a leader thanks to their Texas Hold’em game which now attracts over half a million users daily on Facebook and has close to 1 million total installs on MySpace (where active daily users are not publicly reported).

The company has raised a number of rounds of funding, the most recent one bringing in a whopping $29 million. Zynga is a company to keep you eye on as they have a killer set of investors and advisors and continue to grow at a steady pace.

Social Gaming Network
Social Gaming Network was founded by Shervin Pishevar and was an outgrowth of Webs.com (formerly Freewebs) after having a successful launch of what remains to be one of their cornerstone games: Warbook. Since the launch the company has raised a number of rounds of funding including a recent round from Jeff Bezos.

While the company has been building and acquiring games, making them the 4th largest network on Facebook in terms of installs, none of the games continue have the same sort of blockbuster quality that a number of Zynga’s games have. That’s not to say that this company is out of “the game” (pardon the pun), they are far from it.

This company definitely needs to start launching new games though. While speaking with Shervin Pishevar at last week at f8, it sounded like launching a number of new games on multiple platforms is part of the short-term game plan. With this company’s team of advisors and investors, there is a ton of potential moving forward.

Kongregate
When it comes to social gaming, Kongregate was in this space before it was defined “social gaming”. The company’s largest presence is their destination site but back in May the company made a play for building their presence on social platforms with the launch of the Kongregate Facebook platform. It doesn’t appear that their first attempt was highly successful but the destination site continues to attract a considerable amount of traffic.

Kongregate attracts a network of game developers and helps them promote their games through their site. The company also occasionally develops games of their own. So far their model has been effective at generating a substantial amount of traffic. Whether or not the company can translate that success onto social platforms has yet to be seen but as long as the company keeps innovating it doesn’t matter where they decide to position themselves.

Gaia Online
Gaia is one of the other large social gaming companies that doesn’t have a substantial presence on social networks. The company has developed a site in which users interact via their own custom avatars. Those avatars can then choose to participate in games, watch movies and simply participate in the community.

Playfish
Playfish is a more recent company on the social platforms but they have a solid team of developers and management. The CEO of the company has a history in mobile gaming and is trying to convert his lessons learned to the social gaming sphere. Right now it looks like the company is doing an amazing job. They only have three games so far but each of them have over 200,000 active daily users and appear to be growing.

The company’s most popular game is Who Has the Biggest Brain? and it has been around for months as it continues to attract the attention of Facebook users. I’d keep your eye on this company as it looks like they have some big plans cooking.

Serious Business
Serious Business is best known for their immensely popular Friends for Sale application, written by Siqi Chen. The application was so popular that it has since been duplicated on the MySpace with great success by other companies that ripped off Siqi’s idea. One of those companies (or individuals) now has the most popular application on Facebook.

The company became serious about social gaming when they raised $4 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners back in April. They have yet to release a second game yet but if the second game is anywhere near as popular as their first one, this company could become a serious force to be reckoned with. They already have the 9th most popular application on Facebook so the company has a lot of opportunity to extend that success to future projects.

Are Social Games Really That Much Different?

One key thing that I’ve been trying to determine over the past couple weeks is if “social games” should really be granted their own category. While there is a new set of companies that have emerged as a direct result of the opening of social platforms, most social games mimic the features that make other multiplayer games successful.

Personally, the launch of the iPhone has transformed my idea of “social games”. There are now a number of games that I can play at dinner with my friends and family such as Connect Four, Tic Tac Toe and a number of others, all of which I would consider “social games”. While the users I’m playing against may be physically present and don’t have an identity tied to an online social network, it’s inherently a social activity.

As such, I believe that the “social gaming” networks will slowly begin to mimic traditional gaming companies and simply become part of the group. Those that don’t adapt quickly will slowly drift into oblivion while those that do adapt will quickly become leaders in the gaming industry, not just in this newly created category of “social games”.

Do you believe that social games deserve their own category? How would you define social games? Is there any important points that I missed?

Over the past year I have been covering Facebook and social networks obsessively. The more I write and the more I read, the more complex the social web becomes. The social web is the part of the internet where people socialize and interact with each other. It can be as simple as forums but the social web has come to embody a limitless number of tools from instant messaging to blogs to micro-blogs to social networks to lifestreaming services and more.

It’s clear that the social web has become increasingly complex and with so many places to communicate it is frequently challenging to figure out where the best place to go and talk is. This blog and others are all striving to cover the numerous tools available to you to express yourself to those that you know and those that you’ll never meet or speak to.

The social web embodies all of us and as we progress forward, I’m realizing that there are some really core concepts embodying all of these services. When it comes down to it, the social web is simply about communicating and no matter how many tools or websites are developed, it still all boils down to communicating with others. So after using tool after tool, site after site, I’ve come up with the 10 commandments that everything on the social web should embrace.

1. Thou shalt enable sharing with everyone

The fundamental component of online conversations is sharing. If you haven’t realized this yet, then there is a good chance your social web service is not doing so hot. People want to share information with each other. Take a look at your instant messages, wall posts, or any other site you are on. A large portion of the dialog is about the sharing information. That can include links to websites or personal stories.

The information being shared can also contain audio, video, photos or text which brings us to the second commandment of the social web.

2. Thous shalt support all forms of media

Humans communicate in many ways and on the social web it is no different. There are multiple types of media that users utilize for the purpose of communication. Audio (music, interviews, dictations, etc), video, photographs and text are the four types of media on the social web. Your platform must support all four forms if it is going to succeed. If you don’t support all forms of media, you must enable users to embed other forms of media.

3. Thou shalt provide provide users with a face

I’ve been to many social sites that don’t provide users with the ability to upload their image. For the longest time LinkedIn didn’t support users images and that was a critical mistake that they eventually remedied. A large portion of communication off of the internet is visual and on the web that same rule still applies. If users don’t have a way to express themselves (through their own photo or a logo), there is a large portion of communication that is lost.

4. Thou shalt provide granular privacy settings

The concept of “granular privacy settings” is a fairly recent innovation. I would suggest that many of these settings were a result of user backlash as well as the media coverage of privacy violations and sexual predators. Whatever the cause of granular privacy settings, Facebook has been leading the way in enabling users to control what is visible and not visible to other contacts.

Users should have the right to control what another person can or cannot see. If you don’t have granular privacy settings on your site, you will soon fall by the wayside as users go to another site. In the end the user must have complete control.

5. Thou shall not overload users with email notifications

I understand that getting friend requests provides users with a unique type of satisfaction but overloading the user with notifications is simply annoying. I would suggest developing a scalable notifications system which throttles the number of notifications based on the number of notifications a user receives on a daily basis. Also you must enable the user to turn off all notifications if they so desire.

6. Thou shalt provide a central request repository

This commandment of the social web follows closely to the notifications commandment. The bottom line is that there must be a single place where a user can manage all of their notifications. Whether it’s a friend request, a group invite, or more recently an application invitation, you must place all notifications in one location. Otherwise it will simply be too complicated to navigate.

7. Thou shalt provide a central activity feed

When Mark Zuckerberg developed the news feed for Facebook I doubt he realized that it would become a standard for the web. All social sites must now have a single feed where a user can view all of their activities on the site as well as their friends. In the best case scenario all of this information should be provided to the user via an external feed.

While Facebook doesn’t currently let users access their feed outside of the site, I believe it will soon become a standard to access your feed anywhere. FriendFeed is a prime example of this. Whether you decide to make the feed information public, all sites on the social web must provide users with an activity feed.

8. Thou shalt be absolutely transparent with users

Preparing to release a new feature that will track all of a user’s activities around the web (does the name “Beacon” ring any bells)? You might want to make sure all of your users understand the implications of the new feature and provide them with the ability to use it or not use it. As the social web becomes more integrated, the sharing of information across sites will begin to push the limits of user privacy and keeping users in the dark won’t work.

Be transparent with your users about what you are using their data for and how you are accessing their data. If you aren’t somebody will figure it out and release that information to the world. It sounds better coming from the company’s mouth than somebody else.

9. Thou shalt be a conduit for data, not the sole owner of data

A user comes to your site and enters a bunch of personal data. Do you: a) keep all the data to yourself and try and come up with cool graphs from the data, b) share all of that user’s data with the web, or c) let the user share their data as they please? The answer? C, let the user share their data as they please!

I know that the moment users start putting all types of interesting information into your database all you want to do is start coming up with interesting findings from that data. That’s fine! You are allowed to do practically anything with that user’s data within the confines of your own system. Before you start having all that fun though, why don’t you give those users a way to share that information with other sites if they please?

Whether most people realize it or not, it’s what the user wants to be able to do. Let them share their data with other services, other sites and other people. You still have the right to harvest their data and come up with all those interesting findings you were dying to calculate when they first started entering that information.

Just make sure to let the users do as they’d like with that data as well. This brings me to the last commandment of the social web.

10. Thou shalt provide an API for others to access

If you are collecting various forms of a user’s data and all of their communications you should let them come up with interesting ways to leverage that information. While you most likely have brilliant ideas about how to leverage that information (that’s why you created a product or service on the social web in the first place right?), they too have brilliant ideas. Empowering the users to create their own tools and services with they data they entered into your system will only help you in the long run.

Conclusion

Whether you run a start-up website, a long-running internet business or have been thinking about finally executing on that great idea sitting in the back of your mind, there are some basic principals you should follow. You may be thinking to yourself “Facebook didn’t follow all these commandments and they grew into a company that Microsoft has valued at $15 billion!”

Well you are right but in the past few years Facebook and other companies on the social web have learned many lessons, ten of which I’ve written above. While there are many other guidelines your social web tool or service should follow, these ten commandments of the social web should put you on the right track. Are there any other rules that you think social web companies should abide by?

P.S. Please forgive the cheesy image below. I will be sure to replace it with one that is much more beautiful!

Back in June I wrote about MyYearbook’s phenomenal yearly growth which outstripped Facebook as the fastest growing social network. Last night the company announced that they had raised an additional $13 million from Norwest Venture Partners. The company currently attracts high school student to their website and continues to grow at a furious pace.

As Eric Eldon at VentureBeat points out, the company continues to dominate other competing social networks domestically including hi5, Bebo, Tagged, Meebo and Friendster. This positions the company as a distant third to Facebook and MySapce. Domestically, MyYearbook attracts around 10 million visitors a month while Facebook attracts over 35 million and MySpace has close to 70 million.

As the company grows, the largest challenge will be expanding beyond their initial user base which is comprised of mostly teens. Given the name and the design of the popular social network, it will be hard for the company to grow to a more mature audience. For now, it appears that the company will use the funding to expand their product offering and expand their marketing efforts.

As Caroline McCarthy pointed out, the announcement was relatively ambiguous with releasing any of the company’s intentions. It will be interesting to see how the site changes over the coming year among continued growth.

Yesterday Mike Arrington broke the news that MySpace could be laying up to 5 percent of their staff. While Amit Kapur claimed that the layoffs were “performance driven”, the news still generated some negative buzz for the company. Then last night, MySpace issued a press release announcing that they company hired five new executives (one of which, Jason Oberfest, will be speaking at the upcoming Social Ad Summit).

As Caroline McCarthy points out, the timing couldn’t have been more coincidental. When did these new hires come on board exactly? Who knows, but MySpace decided to issue a press release late last night about it. Manu Thapur, the former Vice President of Engineering at Yahoo!, will become the Senior Vice President of Engineering at MySpace. Angela Courtin, the ex-Vice President of Integrated Marketing for MTV Networks, will become Senior Vice President of Marketing, Entertainment, and Content for MySpace.

Tish Whitcraft will be responsible for building out global support for MySpace and Abe Thomas will serve as Vice President of Online Marketing for MySpace. Finally, Jason Oberfest who previously worked for the LA Times will be leading Business Development at MySpace. As I noted earlier, Jason will also be speaking at our inaugural Social Ad Summit on September 15th in New York City.

As I mentioned earlier, the timing of this announcement makes it pretty clear that MySpace is trying to quell some of the negative buzz generated by Mike Arrington’s article yesterday. These employees could have been working at the company for the past month and only have been announced today.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to chat with Michael Dalesandro, CEO and Craig Ulliot, CTO and Founder of Where I’ve Been. The company has been building out a travel destination site off of Facebook and now also has offering on MySpace, Bebo, hi5 and Friendster. They also raised $1 million from angels a few months ago which apparently went unannounced. We are actually the first to publish this information.

Additionally the company is looking to raise another round of funding to help expand the company’s efforts to become the social travel vertical across the web. I asked Michael and Craig about their thoughts on the new iPhone platform and they said that they are working on launching the first version of their iPhone application. I’d bet that most companies in this space are working at building something on the iPhone as well.

Michael also said that Where I’ve Been is looking for a new round of funding. Listen up VCs! Here is a chance to get some skin in the social web game. Where I’ve Been has over 7 million active users and they are growing daily, not bad stats for a company with $1 million in funding. I also asked them if they plan on tackling the Where Am I Going issue that a number of other web startups (such as WAYN) have already begun tackling.

They said that they plan on providing this service as well but under the amount of resources they currently have available it has been challenging. Listen to my podcast below to hear more about where the Where I’ve Been team is going!

The Republican National Convention, an organization which typically supports candidates that are less than technically savvy, has decided to step up their tactics with a new website targeting Barack Obama. The developers of the site clearly have the beat on digital media given that Barack’s newsfeed is called the “FriendFeed”. Aside from that it’s not a complete rip-off of Facebook but it attempts to come close.

The site picks out a random set of “friends” that have less than a positive spin to their profiles. The team also launched a “BarackBook” Facebook application. Unfortunately the application doesn’t work so perhaps this campaign wasn’t thoroughly planned. The website is ultimately a hit job on Barack which attempts to discredit seven of his associates that have a sketchy past.

The fact that the site can only come up with seven “associates” that Barack has at one point associated himself with is pretty impressive. It’s a creative attack campaign and I give the RNC a lot of credit for this. It’s clearly an attempt at generating a lot of negative publicity for Barack Obama. Whether or not they will succeed at it via this individual campaign is another question.

The Obama campaign has been referring all journalists requesting a response to the RNC discussion board which includes a thread called “This Site is Lame”. Whether or not this campaign is successful, it highlights the massive popularity of Facebook domestically.

According to USA Today, “Congress is considering a bill that would bar children who use computers in public libraries from accessing Facebook and other social networking websites without parental permission.” The law is a measure to protect children from sexual predators. Others are arguing that this interferes with “library users’ privacy and free speech”.

I have to agree with those that argue that this interferes with privacy and free speech. While children should be protected from sexual predators, banning them from having access to social networks is not the way to do it. The again, it should be up to the school to determine what technologies students have access to while on campus. For instance should students be able to bring their portable video game system with them into class?

There is no doubt that students are not involved in the most productive activities while browsing social networks whether at school or at home. Simply put, even without a plethora of game applications, social networks are about as productive as playing video games: there is really no productive value currently. This may be one of the fundamental issues preventing social networks from further monetizing their platforms.

Users of social networks are ultimately not gaining much productive value. The bill being discussed is banning students from social networks at school due to the risk of sexual predators. Ultimately, I don’t think this is the best way to approach the issue. Do you think students should be banned from social networks at school?

Today the iPhone application directory crossed the 1,000 applications milestone. It’s a significant announcement for any new platform and the iPhone appears to be racing to the forefront to potentially become the leading mobile platform for developers. One of the most buzzed about platforms recently is the Facebook platform which has, according to Facebook’s statistics, attracted over 400,00 developers. The iPhone platform is rapidly proving itself to be a significant opportunity as well.

The most significant challenge for the iPhone platform is user adoption. While Apple was able to sell millions of iPhones, the number of total users pales in comparison to other platforms. That doesn’t mean that the platform is one to sneeze at though. Just last week it was reported that the iPhone Facebook application had been downloaded by 1 million users.

While nowhere near the more than 90 million users installed by top Facebook applications, these numbers are still significant for an early platform. Numbers aren’t all that matter though when it comes to comparing platforms. If you take a look at the quality of applications being developed on Facebook versus the quality of applications being developed on the iPhone.

On Facebook, most of the top applications are relatively simple (although they have been improving in quality since the initial launch). At launch, the iPhone provided an immense number of applications which have proven to be extremely useful or at least entertaining. Whether I’m using Shazam to figure out what song I’m hearing in a bar or restaurant, or looking to waste some time playing Labyrinth, BubbleWrap or Monkey Ball, there is a huge value offering.

Also while I was eating lunch in Miami this weekend, I was able to figure out what we would be having for dinner by pulling up the Yelp application and finding nearby, top rated restaurants. The bottom line is that there is a huge value proposition for the iPhone platform regardless of the number of users that have purchased it. Apple will most definitely fill this gap by continuing to sell out of iPhones for the foreseeable future.

As forecasted by many, I believe that the iPhone is the phone to transform the mobile industry in this country and help mobile computing take a huge leap forward. While venture capitalists are warning entrepreneurs not to invest everything in the iPhone, at this point I think it is too large of an opportunity to ignore.

Jemima Kiss is reporting that “Bebo and the TV company behind Wife Swap have teamed up with one of the world’s experts in interstellar radio communication, Dr Alexander Zaitsev, to beam 500 messages from users into space in a digital time capsule.” This means up to 500 users will be able to beam their messages to a planet 20 light years from earth in hopes that their message reaches another life form.

Given that on this planet there are millions of radio waves floating around on a daily basis, even if the messages do make it 20 light years away, I’m not sure that any living creature will be able to receive it. The concept that other “intelligent life” on another planet has also discovered something called “radio waves” is mind blowing. This experiment is literally “a shot in the dark”.

The messages will be sent by Bebo users, celebrities and politicians. When asked about the content of the messages, Dr. Zaitsev said, “I understand that in the majority of cases these messages may be naïve, but I also hope that we will receive a creative and fresh look at the subject.” It sounds like an interesting concept to me but I’m not sure how effective this will ultimately be.

While blasting out interstellar messages sounds amazing, the effect of this seems relatively useless. Who exactly will be listening to see if the “intelligent life” 20 light years away beam anything back? Perhaps they will simply shoot back a rocket? For now this appears to be a successful publicity stunt which has attracted the attention of a few blogs.

Earlier this month MySpace officially announced that they would soon launch application invites. In under a month the invites have finally launched and today MySpace has finally provided developers documentation on how to implement the new feature. Does this mean we will soon see the degradation of the MySpace interface thank to application invite overload?

Potentially. Thankfully though, MySpace has placed all notifications in a separate area within the inbox (as illustrated below), placing them away from friend requests (as currently displayed on Facebook). Hopefully this separation will help protect the user experience while providing applications with a little extra virality. According to a number of developers, the MySpace platform has been building steam over the past couple months.

The top application though is still left at around 6 million installs in comparison to the largest applications on Facebook which have more than 95 million installs. While the Facebook platform continues to be the leading social platform, MySpace is slowly (and wisely) adding new features that help increase application growth while protecting the user experience. This contrasts Facebook who started off with all the viral channels wide open and have since been clamping down on developers.

It will be interesting to see which strategy plays off in the long-run. For now Facebook continues to have the lead but each day MySpace is moving closer to becoming a platform of equals.