Zynga continues to falter and as gamers turn towards other social games developers the one-time powerhouse has shut down 11 of its lesser performing titles.
The news of the games shutdowns was announced by Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and they follow in line with the company’s attempts to downsize staff numbers while focusing on the company’s more popular and profitable titles.
Zynga has shut down the following social gaming titles in the month of December (and others coming in January). read more
Despite the popularity of video, photo and text destruction apps such as Facebook Poke and Snapchat, it actually turns out that recapturing those messages is a very simple process, even after those apps delete a users messages.
While both of the apps alert a user when screengrabs are taken, it turns out that simply connecting a smartphone to a PC or Mac can offload those messages without alerting the sender. In the case of iPhone users a third-party file manager such as iExplorer is required. read more
Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook need to work much harder if they plan to kill off temporary message delivery service Snapchat. While Facebook’s Poke app debuted at No. 1 in the Apple App store it has now fallen out of the Top 25 downloadable free apps.
Launched last week the Facebook Poke app allows users to send messages which are quickly deleted after viewing.
Josh Constine at TechCrunch does bring up a good point, many customers may have received new iPhone devices for Christmas and therefore downloaded device essential apps before downloading fun apps. Essential app downloads could have very well pushed Facebook Poke out of the top 25 iOS downloads list. read more
The team at Facebook may have found a new source of revenue thanks to paid messages. Facebook on Thursday announced a new beta program which allows users to send messages to non-Facebook friends. There’s just one catch, users will have to pay per message. Facebook is testing a $1 fee but that price could skyrocket if the program is a success.
In justifying its decision a Facebook rep writes:
“Today we’re starting a small experiment to test the usefulness of economic signals to determine relevance. This test will give a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other folder of a recipient that they are not connected with. read more
The holiday season is upon us and in celebration of that special time of year the team at Synthesio, a global social media monitoring company, has put together a fun infographic with the top holiday trends in social media.
The firm researchers social media chatter and found that the United States was in first place with 63% saturation, followed by the UK with 30 percent of holiday chatter and France with 4 percent. Far behind was China with 1 percent.
What might be most interesting was the firms examination of what each person on social media thinks of Santa Clause. Here is what US citizens thinks: read more
Facebook mobile ads offered better-than-expected results at the end of Q3, 2012 and now some analysts believe Facebook mobile ads revenue will overtake Google mobile ads by the end of 2012.
Reporting firm eMarketrt predicts that Google will generate $339 million in mobile ad revenue in 2012, a large increase fro the company previous estimates that ranged from $45 million to $100 million.
The firm notes that Facebook is expected to grab an 18.4% of the mobile ad market compared to Google’s current 17% share. Google is also expected to be down from 23% of the mobile ad market in 2011. read more
2012 has been a very good year to be a Hulu partners, according to company estimates the social TV platform will close out 2012 with 3 million subscribers and $695 million in estimated revenue.
Shouting the praises of his company Hulu CEO Jason Kilar notes:
“We are closing on a big 2012. On behalf of the Hulu team, I would like to share some of our results. We’re so thankful to our customers and for the trust they place in us each day, which is enabling us to deliver the below results.” read more
Nielsen Ratings has been called antiquated and out-of-touch with today’s media landscape, Twitter on the other hand offers semantic results that web browsers create through millions of interactions. Together the two company’s hope to create a TV measurement system that brings ratings to the twenty first century.
The new ratings metric will debut in Fall 2013 and while the Nielsen’s rating system will remain in place it will be complemented by new Twitter data that is presented on top of the SocialGuide platform created by NM Incite.
Search giant Google has rolled out new integration practices between its Google+ social network and social video sharing website YouTube.
YouTube users now have the option to share videos they upload on Google+ by selecting that option directly from the upload interface. Once uploaded the videos are automatically showcased in a “videos” tab on the users Google+ profile.
In order to use the new service users must like their Google+ and YouTube accounts under their real name. The new process is very similar to what is already used for Picassa photos sharing.
For Google+ users who do not want to use the service the tab can be hidden.
After opting in to the service the users videos then read “YouTube” and when clicked users will be sent to YouTube rather than watching the embed on Google+, a sly way for YouTube and Google to share multiple pageviews per video engagement. read more
Flickr on Wednesday announced a set of its own photo filters, the platform was created by the Aviary, the same company that provided an SDK package for Twitter’s recently announced photo filters.
On its blog Aviary writers:
“Now, all Flickr users, on web and mobile, can make their photos look amazing with Aviary’s tools, filters and effects.”
Aviary’s software development kit (SDK) works across various mobile operating system. The system is funded by Spark Capital, Jeff Bezos, Reid Hoffman and Walgreens. read more
Zynga continues to falter and as gamers turn towards other social games developers the one-time powerhouse has shut down 11 of its lesser performing titles.
