As an open platform, Facebook sees a lot of curious uses. Occasionally, it is an international company looking for a little more freedom, other times it is used to advertise something bigger, like a game, and still other times it is just some bizarre idea. Okay, so what happens when you combine all three? You get a very… ahem… interesting Facebook game called Park Fight.

Created by Mccann Digital (part of marketing conglomerate McCann Worldroup), the application is an extension of an advertising campaign for Goldstar Beer. Apparently, the beer is targeted at men, so the entire campaign is centered around explaining why it’s a man’s beer through a classic battle-of-the sexes parody.

Of course, all of the ads are hyperbolic. Which is where Park Fight comes into play. It is a very simple app highlighting the supposed end-all-be-all difference between men and women: Parking a car.

Unfortunately, the game is all written in Hebrew, so it takes some clicking about to figure out how to pull out into the street, but once you do, the parking contest begins. Oh, and is it ever a tough challenge. This isn’t just any parking; it’s parallel parking, and it’s in traffic no less.

Using the arrow keys, you try to navigate their way into a tiny virtual space, while traffic stops around you with blaring horns grating user concentration and patience. This, of course, leads mistakes such as to hitting the sidewalk or other cars, and should you hit too many, you fail and the game prompts you to post something along the lines of “Man, you’re embarrassing the firm! You could not shop. The average male stands at 0:42 seconds.”

Why someone would post this to their feed is an enigma, but it does point out a key feature. The game actually averages all of the male and female users’ parking time and updates them within the game itself. Out of around 219,000 monthly active users, the average male parking time is 42 seconds, while women are currently at 53 seconds.

Of course, the times are not solely due to parking or video game playing skills. Actually, they feel pretty high for both sexes — and the primary culprit is extraordinarily backwards controls.

The game is actually an overhead view where the car drives right and left. However, the up and down arrows go forward and back, while the right and left arrows turn, well, right and left. It is logical when you think about it, but considering the orientation of the street and car on screen, it isn’t exactly intuitive, and a bit frustrating.

As far as the advertising goes, it is certainly a funny concept, but the game doesn’t offer much in its own right. There are a few logos, but nothing that looks like beer, and they are all in Hebrew anyway. Basically, that means that for anyone unfamiliar with the campaign itself, you won’t get the whole point.

Nonetheless, Park Fight is certainly an amusing concept and if you look up some of the other ads, you might get a kick out of those, too.

April 20 | San Francisco

Inside Social Apps 2010, our first conference on the future of monetization on social platforms, is now only a few weeks away. On April 20th in San Francisco, one day before Facebook’s official “f8″ event, many of the leading developers from around the world will be gathering to discuss the future of monetization inside social apps and games on Facebook and beyond.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Inside Social Apps 2010 will be held at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF, located at 1675 Owens St in San Francisco (map).

In addition, today we’re excited to announce 7 new speakers for the event: Rick Thompson, co-founder of Playdom and active social gaming investor; Jens Begemann, CEO of Wooga; Alex Rampell, CEO of Trialpay; Steven Goh, CEO of mig33; Jim Bobowski, Director of Online Partner Marketing at Netflix (who manages Netflix’s social network offers); Eric Goldberg, Managing Director of Crossover Technologies; and Benjamin Joffe, Founder of +8*.

They will be joining our full list of 34 speakers listed below.

• Atul Bagga, VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity
• Jens Begemann, CEO, Wooga
• Jim Bobowski, Director Online Partner Marketing, Netflix
  
• Adam Caplan, VP Virtual Currency, Super Rewards / Adknowledge
  
• Renata Dionello, Chief of Staff to the CEO, eBay, and former Director of Consumer Business Development, PayPal
• Eric Eldon, Editor, Inside Facebook & Inside Social Games
• Dave Etling, VP Product Development, InComm
  
• George Garrick, CEO, Offerpal Media
• Steven Goh, CEO, mig33
• Eric Goldberg, Managing Director, Crossover Technologies
  
• Vikas Gupta, CEO, Jambool
• Sebastien de Halleux, Founder and COO, Playfish, and VP Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, EA Interactive
• Ron Hirson, Co-founder and SVP Product, Boku
• Benjamin Joffe, Founder, +8*
  
• Nick Lawler, Managing Director, Maverick Capital
• Keith Lee, Co-founder and CEO, Booyah
• Jeremy Liew, Managing Director, Lightspeed Venture Partners
  
• Vish Makhijani, COO, Zynga
• David Marcus, CEO, Zong
• Lisa Marino, CRO, RockYou
  
• Dave McClure, Investor, Founders Fund Angel and fbFund Incubator
• Rex Ng, Co-founder and CEO, 6waves
• Jason Oberfest, VP Social Applications, ngmoco
• Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga
• Shervin Pishevar, Founder and Executive Chairman, SGN
• John Pleasants, CEO, Playdom
• Keith Rabois, VP Strategy and Business Development, Slide
• Alex Rampell, CEO, TrialPay
  
• Peter Relan, Executive Chairman, CrowdStar
• Justin Smith, Founder, Inside Network
• Kavin Stewart, CEO, Lolapps
• Rick Thompson, Co-founder, Playdom, and Investor
  
• Jay Weintraub, Founder, LeadsCon
• Season Xu, Co-founder and COO, Five Minutes
  

Finally, a limited set of “early general admission” tickets is now available through Friday at a special price of $329. This price will change after Friday, and space will be limited, so we encourage you to register now.

Inside Social Apps 2010 – April 20th in San Francisco

Three years after the Facebook Platform launched in 2007, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry. Today, social games monetizing through virtual goods have quickly become one of the hottest sectors of technology and entertainment, both in the US and around the world. Where are social apps going, and who is leading the way?

Inside Network is proud to announce our first conference on the future of monetization on social platforms: Inside Social Apps 2010, happening April 20th in San Francisco, is bringing together the world’s leading entrepreneurs all in one place to discuss the future of social applications and games monetizing through virtual goods.

This will be an in-depth one day event geared toward developers on Facebook, MySpace, and the iPhone, senior executives, and investors. At Inside Social Apps 2010, founders and CEOs of the top social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies will be tackling the key issues facing the industry. We’re hosting it one day before Facebook’s “f8″ event in San Francisco, so this will be an excellent opportunity to learn about the key issues facing the future of the Facebook Platform and beyond before Facebook’s official event.

Register Now

A limited set of “early general admission” tickets is available through Friday at a special price of $329. This price will change after Friday, and space will be very limited, so we encourage you to register early.

From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on April 20th in San Francisco!

While Hi5 has increased its amount of rhetoric against Facebook, it has made some precise moves to attract game developers — especially from the Facebook Platform. It’s not clear if the moves will work, in part because Facebook has likely grown by the size of Hi5′s 50 million monthly active users already this year.

Hi5 is continuing to aggressively make the social network more of a gaming destination. Last week, it began supporting Facebook’s platform APIs, meaning developers with Facebook applications can more easily repurpose them to Hi5′s platform. Now, it’s announcing a special “Game Developer Program” intended to give third parties numerous advantages in reaching Hi5 users and making money. The catch is that all developers need to apply (here) to get into the program — a way for Hi5 to maintain quality. The specific benefits of the program include special ways for developers to reach users and make money.

Facebook recently took away notifications, a tool that many apps engaged users. Hi5 says it will give games a special one-click game install interface, access to let them send notifications to users in friend updates, and “un-capped invitations.” The last item means that developers in the program will not have apps limited by, say 30, invites a day — Facebook has made limits to help control spammy behavior. Hi5′s solution is to carefully approve and monitor its game developer partners, presumably kicking them out of the program if they get too spammy. Other special access points include APIs allowing games to add items in to user profiles, including user achievements and high scores.

And, Hi5 is going to be providing free banner ads, special appearances on its Games page (which is linked directly from the homepage) and in its games toolbar, recommend games to users, and more it will announce later. The plan here is to give smaller games a boost in users without having to buy advertising — on-site advertising is an increasingly important way for developers to reach users on Facebook.

Regarding money, some developers have been using Hi5 Coins, the site’s virtual currency, in their own games for many months. Now, anyone in the program will be able to, although it’s not saying what payment cut it’s taking. The currency includes 60 payment methods in 30 currencies. Hi5 also runs premium advertising alongside games, and it will share some of this revenue with games in the program.

So, while Hi5′s application platform will still exist, the program is intended to lure developers in to a tighter relationship with the company. New partners include: Detonator Games, Exponential Entertainment and Immortal Games.

Given its size and mature platform, Facebook is still going to be the priority for many developers. The second-largest social gaming platform, MySpace, has also just made big improvements to attract game developers. Hi5, however, is arguably the social platform most focused on games — specialization is a classic business strategy for a smaller competitor, and given where Hi5 is at, we think it’s making the right moves. We’ll see if it will work.

Apparently, the end of the world isn’t going to be a nuclear war, the rise of Skynet, or even a biological weapon that turns us all into zombies. No, evidently the end will be cybernetic cats and radioactive elephants. Well, at least that’s the image that Islamabad-based social developer White Rabbit paints with Feline Frenzy: Robot Wars.

The game is a quirky, simple, arcade-shooter that has cyborg storks dropping cyborg cats onto the flanks of a simple hut with a giant cannon on the roof. Using the arrow keys and space bar, players rotate the cannon right or left in an attempt to shoot the balloons that are floating the cats down to safety. Unfortunately, your ammunition cache is comprised of mere boots, so hitting the balloons and sending the evil felines plummeting to their doom is all that will work. However, four reaching the ground safely on either side spells failure for the player.

The goal of the game is to last as long as you can, and brag about it to your friends later. As players shoot the various storks and cats, they score points (which of course means there is a leaderboard system), with more being earned the quicker they hit the target. However, the catch is that for every shot fired, it costs points, so it is prudent to be accurate. It is possible, though, to get some free shots by inviting friends.

To a degree, this is quite useful in racking up higher scores, as some of the unlockable ammunition – better shoes, of course – have higher point costs to use, but extra benefits. As a general example, the Cowboy Boots are larger, so they cover more area, while the Khussa Shoes are small, but ricochet. Each piece of footwear acts as a makeshift achievement as well, since they are not all unlocked the same way. Some are unlocked by reaching a new level during a game, which is basically symbiotic with your score, while others require you to win gold medals in the app’s eight mini-games.

In fact, these games do make for an added bonus as they are all more curious adaptations to the main shooting concept. Some are merely survival games, only giving the player two cats on each side before losing, others have tiny balloons, while still other involve a deluge of radioactive, nuclear elephants.

This actually leads to a major complaint with Feline Frenzy though. The controls feel extremely sluggish, for it seemingly takes forever to rotate the cannon from one end to the other. It isn’t too much of an issue for the storks and cats, but these blasted elephants come out of nowhere from the top of the screen and fall faster than the cannon can turn. As an example, if your cannon is aiming far left, and one falls from the right, they will hit you, and when they do, it’s game over. Period. Obviously, it is frustrating to be able to see, it coming, but it is not possible to hit.

Overall Feline Frenzy is a moderately amusing game, but once the novelty of the cybernetic cat invasion has worn off, we wonder how many players will keep coming back. The name suggests that we will be seeing more Feline Frenzy titles in the future. The title has been growing steadily over the past week and a half since launching, with about 2,700 monthly active users to date.