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.

Merchants:

1. Register and get approved.
2. Receive a snippet of HTML and JavaScript code, to be embedded into a payment web page for products or services.
3. Login into the system, with new username and password, to track real-time reports.

Customers:

1. Add an item to your shopping cart. If you select Mobile First’s payment by phone widget, you are prompted to enter your mobile phone number.
2. Check for a text message with a 4-digit security PIN code.
3. Enter the code on the merchant’s payment web page, for user authentication purposes.
4. Indicate the number of credits you are purchasing, which become available immediately after authentication.
5. Complete your purchase.

It’s not clear from Mobile First’s webpage whether the purchase cost ends up on the customer’s mobile phone bill or is deducted from paid minutes, although the former seems the most likely method.

Pros

Here are some of the pros for both merchants and customers.
Benefits for Merchants:

1. Mobile First handles all the payment details for merchants.
2. Eliminates credits cards and thus opens up the mobile billing and payment market. Merchants can reach customers who are connected online and by phone and text messages, but may not have ready access to credit cards or other payment processors such as PayPal. Alternatively, merchants who sell goods and services that are disallowed by other payment processors can still operate. (Mobile First’s typical niches include virtual currency platforms, online games, social networks and various entertainment offerings.
3. No setup or monthly fees, and registration process is fairly easy.
4. Can be easily integrated into a merchant’s site. After registration is approved, a snippet of HTML and JavaScript code is emailed to the merchant, to be added to their payment web page(s).
5. Real-time reporting lets you track sales.
6. Mobile first offers merchant support services and local language translation.
7. Proven system. ‘Mobile Payment’ solution is built on Mobile First’s platform, which has handled over “[US$250M] in mobile payments since 2003.”

Benefits for Customers:

1. Online purchasing power without a credit card or PayPal account.
2. Easy-to-use, user-friendly payment widget.
3. Security. You have to have access to the phone number used for payment, and verification is in real-time.

Cons

1. Incomplete documentation. There’s little indication of the cost of the service, other than the revenue calculator widget, above, that says there’s a Telco share fee of 35%.
2. High fee. The revenue calculator widget shows that, based on current conversion rates, a merchant in certain niches will do better sales by accepting phone payments. However, given the 35% indicated Telco fee for First Mobile compared to the indicated 2% handling for credit cards, there could be money left on the table if a certain market gains access to credit cards or PayPal, and becomes more comfortable with CC payments.
3. Username limitations. Username for registration is too small: 4-8 characters, letters and digits only. (Suggestion: 12 characters max, including underscores.)
4. Signup is not instant. You have to wait for them to contact you. (So I was unable to test and comment on their API code.)
5. Untapped markets. India and China are not amongst the forty markets currently listed, despite the growing number of residents who own smartphones (Note: In a number of countries, Internet access is via smartphone.)
6. No mobile app. An application on a mobile platform, such as the iPhone OS, would be handy for merchants to track real-time reports on the go.

Mobile First, which was founded in 2003, is based in Silicon Valley, with over 100 employees in offices in the USA and Hong Kong.

There have been moves like this before.  Specifically, Gambit announced this functionality last year, and the functionality is very much the same.  Gambit emphasized that the tasks are activities that are “hard for software to master, but extremely easy for humans – especially social game-playing, Internet-savvy humans who are incentivized by the prospect of earning your virtual currency.”

Offerpal was one of the first players to monetize the social gaming scene, by providing offers to social game publishers who could then incent users to gain in-game currency by completing surveys and offers through Offerpal.  The practice was extremely successful on early games like Mob Wars and Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, and the competitors arose.  Zynga was a big user of Offerpal, while Playfish used TrialPay.  Zynga’s Mark Pincus reported that 33% of revenues came from offers, and the market was rosy until Facebook added strict guidelines to the ad guidelines for these offers.

Offerpal had to fight a lot of controversy late last year regarding the potential scams within the offer stratosphere, and after a public confrontation with Mike Arrington, Offerpal’s CEO Anu Shukla was replaced with George Garrick, with Shukla staying on to continue (as she is the majority stakeholder).  The company has been making a steady stream of interesting product announcements since, and seems to have steadied out.

The Hi-Media group of websites has over 50 million monthly unique visitors, and the fact that they’ve been driving payments for non-gaming related goods means that their focus was surely on optimizing the purchase-flow and ease-of-purchase.  Their integration of online checkouts; mobile, home phone or internet billing; premium SMS; credit and debit cards, prepaid cards and Allopass electronic wallet means that users really have flexibility in making their transactions.  Notable here is the lack of any type of offer-based service, which means that competitors like Offerpal and TrialPay may still have edges.  The nature of the virtual currency game can be tricky here, because those companies have the opportunity to work with Allopass or against it.  It all depends on their positioning and how much of the customer payment workflow they want to own.

Certainly, the number of players in the microtransaction platform world is increasing every day.  Companies like Boku and Zong offer similar services: Zong allows players to pay with their mobile phones directly through the carriers and Boku does the same, but usually with aggregator middlemen.  Hi-Media, who also establish direct relationships with carriers, will have an advantage in that sense as well, but in my opinion the big differentiator will be in the customer offering.  If the services don’t really offer fast turnaround on purchase-flow, they won’t be able to keep up in a sea of competitors.  Also, throwing something like Facebook Currency into the mix, if social games start to leverage that type of currency, it becomes different to introduce any type of third party monetization without having it seem forced.

It has been almost two years since Facebook first withdrew their support of Google Friend Connect, and now almost two years later, the company is preparing to unleash a new arsenal. While the company’s new “Social Web Team” may be limited to a handful of open web advocates, it’s clear that Google wants to be a strong contender in the race to own the social web.

Up until now Facebook and Twitter have been battling for domination, but with 400 million users, there is pretty much no competition to Facebook. Google hopes to change that all starting with “a module” which will be added “to the Gmail screen that will display a stream of updates from individuals a user chooses to connect with”.

Whether or not Google’s attempt will succeed, Joseph Smarr told Caroline McCarthy that “Google’s decided that social is one of its big focuses for 2010″. Is the company too late to the game or does Google have a shot? With the amount of jockeying that the company has been doing in only the first month of year, we can only expect an all out war between Google and Facebook in 2010. Who do you think will win?

First off, who is developing/designing the game?  It was not announced whether Playfish would be working on this or not, and if we look at EA’s past track records with Sports-based Facebook Applications, we don’t see much gameplay and the applications, like EA Sports Football World are instead just aggregators of game data.  In fact, the announcement is very limited in its description and in fact does not refer to the property as a game specifically, although that seemed to be what Moore was hinting at.

Another possibility is that this will be a cut above existing Facebook applications.  With the powerful new three-dimensional games web-games powered by the “Unity” framework, EA was able to create a full-experience Tiger Woods Woods game with Facebook Connect.  It would be quite a feat if EA introduced a full 3D game to Facebook, with the Madden brand.

In any case, more news is sure to pour out for Madden NFL and EA Sports in general.  Peter Moore is definitely excited about the potential for Social Games and has gone on record many times about it.  Stay tuned for more!

WeeMee Avatar Creator was developed by WeeWorld and Smallmedium, a Toronto-based application publisher. Both firms are eager to bring this aspect of WeeWorld to users of the iPhone and iPod touch.

This application will be great for fans of the virtual world WeeWorld, as they will have another avenue to design and edit the WeeMee that best represents them online. Part of the allure of WeeWorlds is precisely this ability to create a virtual representation of yourself. Your penchant for playing soccer or your love of music can shown off by your WeeMee, as accessories like soccer balls, jerseys, guitars, and headphones can all be added to the avatar.

WeeWorlds hopes that by adding an iPhone and iPod touch application to their repertoire, they will expand their community to include Apple mobile users. Although the WeeMee Avatar Creator does not directly give access to the full virtual WeeWorld, it will give users who may not be familiar with that space a taste of the fun, colorful, customizable avatars that they can create if they sign up.

Users can access WeeMee Avatar Creator via the Apple App Store on their iPhone or iPod touch, or from iTunes .

Arcades, which are on a steep decline, foster a good sense of competition, and leveraging Facebook Connect can take this to another level.  Imagine a public Facebook application where a Golden Tee gamers scores are always uploaded.  This would allow the Facebook application to become the grounds for tournaments and more, and all the players will be connected by their Facebook accounts and real personalities (rather than arcade’s tradition 3 letter representation of your name).  This is an interesting example of Facebook promoting social behavior outside of its network.

The other feature introduced by the new Golden Tee is Youtube video uploads, aptly named”Golden Tee Live Great Shot Replays”.  The feature works a little differently than expected, with the player being given a cue to enter their email address after a shot, at which point an email is sent out that allows the player to login from their phone or browser and then upload the shot.  This keeps the login process away from the game, which would be extremely annoying to those waiting in line.  It seems well implemented, but searching Youtube for the title only returns 5,560 results, so it isn’t a huge success at this point.  However, the players that do engage with this are sure to continue playing, and can be considered more engaged with the game due to the feature. 

If you’re a huge fan of Golden Tee, I recommend you check out Ira Dean’s passionate musical tribute to Golden Tee’s 21st birthday: Check out “It’s Golden Tee” here.

“Social gaming has gone mainstream,” said Mike Verdu, senior vice president of games at Zynga. “People love to connect with their friends through our games, which are broadly accessible and have universal themes.  Bringing FarmVille to a major site like MSN Games is a great way to expand the reach of social games and is a logical next step in how we deliver them to consumers.”

The implications of this on Social Gaming are huge.  If gamers are able to play Facebook games seamlessly from MSN Games, this could be the start of Facebook Applications spreading to other popular game destinations like Yahoo and more.  Other game developers could also jump on board, like Playfish and Crowdstar, and the Facebook games that were once just a small diversion will begin to eat into the casual gaming market, which is massive as well.

Microsoft has been making moves to work with Facebook for a while, recently partnering with Facebook to enable Bing-search from within Facebook, and now this.  This was expected after they invested $240 million into Facebook in 2007.  Rumors about about the future partnerships and potentials between the two companies, and this type of integration follows suite.   Microsoft’s Mike Ybarra, general manager for Windows Gaming stated “As hundreds of millions of customers continue to enjoy social gaming, we’re excited to partner with Zynga to add FarmVille to our broad portfolio of games on MSN Games”.

A question that remains unanswered here is what type of Live Messenger integration are we going to see?  Does this mean that Messenger users will be able to play the game from within their Messenger chat windows?  If so, this could lead to a more integrated experience for MSN Messenger users who access Facebook.  It’s feasible that perhaps Microsoft intends to centralize Live IDs with Facebook IDs, which would be a very far-reaching identification, and could help them in their web battle against Google and Apple.

Zynga, which has more than 200 million users and racked in revenues of around 200 million in 2009, has disclosed that only 1% of its user base currently buys virtual goods. Imagine the impact on Zynga’s revenues if that percentage could be moved up to 10% or more. This is exactly what Kwedit wants to accomplish. Kwedit believes that Facebook Gamers want to purchase virtual goods, but they simply cant do it at the moment.

According to Danny Shader, Kwedit’s chief executive officer, who previously sold Good Technology Inc. to Motorola Inc. and Accept.com to Amazon.com Inc:

There is a group of players out there who would pay if they could pay. We can drive a ton of revenue to the Zyngas of the world.

Kwedit plans to provide revolving credit to teens, so they could access virtual goods worth a certain amount before they are forced to pay. If they don’t pay up at their nearest 7-Eleven, they wont be able to buy again. Since Kwedit would be partnering with the likes of Zynga’s, no money would be lost since every thing is virtual. Such is the age in which we live – Goods are virtual, yet profits are real.