FACEBOOK HAS BEEN repositioning itself as a news portal recently with redesigned pages, changes to its news feed algorithm and its launch of Paper in the US, but it’s also finding success in games.
The site revealed that an average of 375 million people play Facebook-connected games like Candy Crush Saga each month – just under a third of the site’s 1.2 billion members – and the site and mobile apps send an average of 735 million referrals to games every day.
The findings came from an internal study the company ran in September, looking at how people play games through both the site and mobile apps.
Unsurprisingly, it found that the more opportunities you have to play a game, the more addicted you’re going to be. For example, mobile engagement for cross-platform players was 2.4 times the engagement of mobile only players, while desktop engagement for similar players was 1.5 times greater than desktop-only players.
It also found that these players were willing to spend more on in-app purchases as well with cross-platform players spending on desktop was 3.3 times greater than the revenue of desktop-only players.
For Facebook, this is great news as it’s has been pushing app advertisements, grouping a number of them together and allowing users to download them directly from its own app.
The site is also experimenting with different ways of sending notifications to both players and non-players. For those who are bombarded with requests from Candy Crush and the like, things aren’t going to get better as they will still be there, just phrased differently.
The company revealed the study at the Games Developers Conference (GDC), which is happening in San Francisco this week.
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