Inside Social Games extends a big thank you to our sponsors for supporting the continued growth of Inside Social games. Check them out below!

TapJoy offers monetization services for social and mobile gaming applications.

Adknowledge offers advertisers alternatives to traditional search engine advertising.

maudau helps companies cross-promote their applications.

6waves is an international publisher and developer of gaming applications on the Facebook platform.

Peak Games is a provider of social games for users in the EMEA region.

Brighter Option helps launch, monitor, and optimize Facebook advertising campaigns.

Kontagent is a developer of analytics solutions for social application developers.

JunglePay is a mobile payment solution for web sites, mobile sites and applications.

RightScale provides cloud computing management for social application and game developers.

AdParlor is an official Facebook Ads API Partner and manages large-scale Facebook advertising campaigns, acquisition campaigns for social game developers and fan growth campaigns for large brands and agencies.

SoftLayer provides cloud and dedicated hosting services for social application and game developers.

Viximo provides social networks with social applications and gaming platforms.

Facebook’s new App Ticker that is displayed on the games Canvas page and lists news of friends engaging with games will also show abbreviated versions of Sponsored Stories, Facebook’s social ad unit. Sponsored Stories bought by advertisers are now eligible to inform users about the app their friends use from within the App Ticker as well as from their regular spot in Facebook’s ads sidebar. This is currently the only way that ads are mixed into any of Facebook’s content streams

This additional placement of Sponsored Stories will improve the ability of advertisers to reach gamers, which could be especially useful for developers looking to gain new users. However, to make the ticker’s sponsored app discovery stories as appealing as possible, Facebook will need to show them about friends that users trust as wise, active gamers.

Reaching the Right Audience

Facebook released Sponsored Stories in January as a new way for advertisers to serve highly relevant ads promoting their Facebook properties. The ads show which of a user’s friends have recently Liked a Page or Page’s updates, used an app or game, or shared content from a Facebook-integrated website, amplifying the reach of what were news feed stories.

Until the launch of the App Ticker earlier this month, Sponsored Stories only appeared in the ads sidebar to users browsing Facebook. Now, gamers will see entries in their App Ticker marked “Sponsored”. These are in fact the same Sponsored Stories, albeit in a condensed format that just shows the name and face of a user’s friend and the title of an app or game they’ve used, but no image of the app or game. Sponsored Stories about Pages and websites may also appear in the App Ticker, though we’ve only seen ones about apps and games so far.

Previously, developers could try to gain new gamers through App Used, Game Played, and App Share Sponsored Stories, but these would be shown to all users including those who rarely or never played games. They could target Sponsored Stories about one of their apps to users of another app they controlled, but otherwise trying to reach gamers was less predictable.

With placement in a new channel that only reaches gamers, these types of Sponsored Stories are now more likely to reach their intended audience and drive installs from users with better monetization potential down the line.

Promoting Usage of Trusted Gamers

Inexperienced gamers might be lured to try out a new app just because any of their friends have installed it. However, developers are trying to draw hardcore social gamers with the most monetization potential. These users know which of their friends are actually active players that can be relied upon to accept requests and cooperate in games, in other words which friends’ implicit game recommendations through Sponsored Stories can be trusted.

Therefore, Facebook may need to refine its targeting and display algorithms for App Ticker Sponsored Stories so that game usage of these trusted gamer friends is more frequently displayed. These might not necessarily be a user’s closest friends with regards to social signals such as Likes of each other’s news feed posts or tags in the same photos. Instead the App Ticker Sponsored Stories should highlight friends who accept a user’s game requests, frequently interact in-game through gifting, visiting, and competitive activities, and play the most games.

Along with determining what friends have Sponsored Stories about them appear in the ticker, these algorithm tweaks could determine which friend’s photo is displayed in Sponsored Stories when the names of multiple friends that have used an app are listed.

If Facebook can surface trusted gamers in App Ticker Sponsored Stories, developers buying them will see better performance. This could make the ticker an important paid growth channel in addition to driving free, organic growth, leading developers to spend more on the social ad unit.

Josh Constine contributed to this article.

Walk-throughs and strategies for using Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad unit can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook.

Zynga Japan Shuts Down FarmVille & Treasure Isle — According to a post from Dr. Serkan Toto, and via Game Watch, Zynga Japan is sunsetting down both FarmVille (Farmvillage) and Treasure Isle (Treasure Island) on Japan’s social network, Mixi. Each title was earning around 114,000 and 21,000 users each.

EA Uses Debt to Pay for PopCap — EA states that it will use $550 million in convertible debt to finance part of its recent PopCap purchase. As noted by VentureBeat, this is likely to allow for greater financial flexibility when it comes to making further acquisitions.

Ubisoft Buys Owlient — Core games developer Ubisoft has purchased web games developer Owlient. The acquisition is part of Ubisoft’s strategy to expand its games onto the web, social networks, and mobile spaces.

SponsorPay Launches BrandEngage to Drive Engagement & Monetization — Social advertising platform SponsorPay released a new product called BrandEngage this week. The service allows social game and app developers to enhance user engagement and monetization in their titles by integrating cost-per-engagement campaigns on Facebook and other social networks.

Kontagent Expands Analytics Platform — Earlier this week, Kontagent expanded its social analytics platform beyond games and apps on the Facebook platform with kSuite. Now, game developers for both the web and mobile platforms will be able utilize demographic data based on location, age groups, gender, engagement, and so on in real time.

Round of Funding Raised for deal united — The payments company behind PAY.BY.SHOPPING, deal united, has announced the ending of a Series B financing round led by Tengelmann E-Commerce Beteiligungs GmbH. Also participating were Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, KFW Bankengruppe, High-Tech Gründerfonds, and Venture Incubator. Though the exact amount raised was not noted, the proceeds are stated to be used for expanding global brand awareness.

EMI Signs Deal With Social Games Publisher MXP4 — Major record label EMI has signed a deal with social games publisher MXP4 says the Guardian. Through the deal, EMI will provide music from various artists to sell within MXP4′s Bopler Games app on Facebook. Sixty seconds of songs will be free, but Facebook Credits will be required to purchase full access.

Sometrics Releases Virtual Currency Infographic — Sometrics has released an infographic regarding its virtual currency services. According to the data, the majority of virtual currency purchases they’ve seen since has derived from the MMOG at 43 percent, followed by casual and social games at 35 percent. Additionally, credit cards make up the primary payment method at 53 percent with the most active spending day being Friday.

[Launch] Kabam Releases New Dragons of Atlantis Content — Social developer Kabam has announced the release of new content for its Facebook title, Dragon’s of Atlantis. High level players will now be able to further upgrade their Fortress with new looks and abilities as well as be able to gain access to a new combat class, the Fire Dragon.

Cow Clicker Runs Amusing Campaign — Facebook application Cow Clicker is running an amusing promotion to “Save The Pigs” by clicking cows in their game. Poking fun at Angry Birds, the app provides an amusingly written “open letter” detailing the entire predicament.

EA Reveals More About Origin — At EA’s Summer Showcase event yesterday, the company revealed new features for its upcoming Origin social gaming network. The main highlight is cross-platform interaction for Facebook, iOS, and Android where users can import Facebook and Twitter friends and host universal leaderboards. Players can also launch games from within Origin and keep tabs on friends’ current games.

Also at the showcase, Electronic Arts Interactive Senior VP Chip Lange demoed features for the upcoming FIFA 12 on iOS, which will allow users to link up two iPhone 4 devices as controllers, and then link those to an iPad via Bluetooth. The iPad can then transmit the game to a big screen TV. Scrabble is getting a similar multi-platform play experience, allowing users on Android, iPhone, Facebook, and iPad to play live games.

Zynga Sales to Reach $500 Million for Facebook – According to GreenCast Capital Management as reported by Bloomberg, social game developer Zynga is expected to generate $500 million in revenue for Facebook this year. The company is stated to pay $100 million in advertising, and the 30% of virtual goods revenue from Zynga games is expected to total around $400 million.

Sid Meier Talks CivWorld — Game designer Sid Meier spoke extensively with Gamasutra about the just-launched CivWorld on Facebook. Meier echoes many of the thoughts other traditional game developers have shared with regard to making social games: Find the fun first, then count on monetization from it.

PopCap May Bring Bejeweled Blitz to Google+ — As we’ve noted before, the Google+ source code suggests that social games may be in the platform’s future. According to Fusible.com, PopCap Games may play a role in that. The company has registered two new domain names including playbejeweledblitzplus.com and playbejeweledblitzplus.net. The logic behind the assumption is that all desktop versions of PopCap games are suffixed with the word “Deluxe.”

[Announcement] King.com Launches New Titles — Cross-platform social games developer King.com has announced two new titles this week for both mobile and Facebook. For the former, the iOS game of Miner Speed comes to Android, and for the latter, the company has released Mahjong Saga.

Outspark Launches New Digital Distribution Platform — Free-to-play online games publisher Outspark has announced the launch of a new digital distribution platform called Flint this week, says VentureBeat. The new platform is intended to help third party developers more easily distribute their free-to-play MMOGs and browser-based titles.

Zynga Getting Better About Domain Name Secrecy — Zynga has previously dropped clues on upcoming releases with trademark applications and domain registrations, however, as spotted by Fusible, the company is getting more secretive about both. As an example, Empires & Allies didn’t have a trademark filing until the day of announcement in the U.S. Additionally, in order to help remain incognito with domain registrations that show up on GoDaddy, the company is registering under @yahoo.com email extensions instead of @zynga.com.

EA Adds to Its Social Games Lineup — Electronic Arts made some social game announcements at E3 this week, showing off a Facebook version of one of its most popular franchises with The Sims Social, which we highlighted earlier this week. EA is also teaming up with Hasbro to bring yet another title to Facebook in the form of RISK: Factions. The social strategy game is currently in closed beta, but EA did display an amusing trailer at E3, spoofing that of Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft II.

Playdom Prepares for War with City of Might — Social developer Playdom revealed its own entry into Facebook’s rapidly swelling strategy genre with City of Might, announced at E3. The upcoming game as described by Games.com is a combination of a city builder and strategy game in which users collect resources to build structures and units in order to invade the cities of other players.

[image via Games.com]

2010 Digital Revenue Equates to $5.9 Billion — The Entertainment Software Association, chief organizing body of E3, released a study that states that the primary driver of the game industry’s growth is digital. According to the report, digitally downloaded games, add-on content, mobile apps, subscriptions, and social games made up 24% of all game-based sales in 2010, equaling $5.9 billion in revenue.

Majesco Expands Socially — Video game publisher Majesco Entertainment announced several acquisitions from Quick Hit Inc. in order to expand Majesco’s social games reach. Additionally, Quick Hit founder and CEO Jeffrey Anderson will join Majesco as its senior vice president of social games.

Moshi Monsters Exceeds 50 Million Users — Mind Candy announced that its social virtual world for kids, Moshi Monsters, broke the 50 million registered user mark. According to the announcement, 15 million of those users are in North America.

Businesses Seek to Use Social Games to Improve Health — According to The Wall Street Journal, Keas Inc. and Redbrick Health Corp. are hoping to help companies cut health-care costs by improving employee health through social gaming.  Through their respective social gaming services, they hope to use social mechanics to coax workers into eating properly and exercising through the use of mechanics such as prizes, incentives, achievements, and so on.

Zynga to Limit Shares for IPO — According to the New York Post, Zynga is planning to limit the number of shares in its initial public offering. The number of shares is being estimated at 10 percent or less.

Zynga Opens Dublin, Ireland Office — In more Zynga news, the company has officially opened its largest European office and multilingual operations centre in Dublin, Ireland. The office is said to include customer support, community management, and support functions (e.g. IT, human resources, etc.).

EA General Manager Launches New Social Games Company — The former general manager of EA Montreal, Alain Tascan, has launched a new social games company called SAVA Transmedia. Though no titles have been announced, the studio states that it seeks to “redefine the future of social games” and wants to connect players “on every screen.”

Alfa Romeo Sponsors I AM PLAYR In-Game — Social football (soccer) game I AM PLAYR, from We R Interactive, has partnered with Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo. Through the deal, the Alfa Romeo brand will be integrated into the game’s fictional football club, dubbed “River Park FC.”

Capital One Teams Up With Zynga — In another promotional deal within Zynga’s FarmVille, users can now find the Capital One brand within the game via a Visigoth statue that grants double mastery points on crops for one week. It is earned by Liking Capital One’s Facebook fanpage. In addition, there is also branded avatar clothing and an offer to earn fast cash by watching a Capital One TV spot.

OnLive to Integrate With Facebook — OnLive is announcing a new gaming integration for Facebook, as VentureBeat details. Through the service, players will be able to play a game and post what the company is calling a “brag clip” highlighting their favorite in-game moments. Additionally, users can instantly join game being played and watch.

TrialPay Awarded Patents for “Alternative Payment Systems” – TrialPay has announced that it has been recently granted its fourth patent from the U.S. Patent Office. A list of their current patents can be found here.

EA Sets World Record with Monopoly Millionaires — Electronic Arts and Hasbro announced the breaking of a Guinness World Record this week within its social title, Monopoly Millionaires. The record was set for the most simultaneously online players worldwide. 197 countries participated during “Global Monopoly Day” with over 1.6 million game sessions played that day. 32,976 were recorded to have been on at one time. An infographic of other stats from the day can be found here.

Cooking Mama Friends’ Cafe Receives Arkadium Stadium Features — Social game Cooking Mama Friends’ Cafe, from Majesco Entertainment,  has received directly integrated features available through Arkadium Stadium (which allows users to play Flash-based games directly from a Facebook wall). Soft-launched last week and is noted to have been played over 5,500 times via users’ walls.

Pixonic Raises $5 Million — In funding news, Russian social games publisher Pixonic announced the raising of $5 million this week. Ventech, Kite Ventures, and TA Ventures participated in the round, and the funding is noted to be used towards publishing new social games via its PixAPI platform.

It has been an intense week for freemium game developers on Apple’s iOS platform — and the drama has yet to be resolved, as we’ve been covering over on Inside Mobile Apps. By last Sunday, a number of service providers for iOS developers were reporting odd changes in Apple’s top apps rankings in its iTunes App Store.

Some apps rose to the top after months of lower rankings for no apparent reason, while others were buried. Facebook, for example, suddenly became the most popular top free application on iOS despite not having made any recent changes and not having been #1 since at least July 2009 — which suggested that daily and monthly usage could be newly important factors. At the same time, some games lost their ranking spots. But as of Tuesday, the rankings changed back to favoring new games that apparently had high downloads rates. It’s not clear what factors Apple is considering now in the rankings.

Meanwhile, developers began receiving rejection notices starting late last week from Apple for new submissions that contain offer walls where users can get rewards for downloading other developers’ games. The rejection notices argue that offer walls have an “excessive influence” on the chart ranking.

Apple has been mum and many service providers have also gone quiet as they try to come to up with solutions. We’ll be covering these changes as we learn more, over on Inside Mobile Apps.

In the meantime, we’ve been leading coverage of the issues over the past week. In case you’ve missed it, be sure to check out the following articles, in chronological order:

• Apple May Have Tweaked App Store Ranking Algorithm, Making Downloads Matter Less
• Facebook’s iPhone App Vaults to #1 on Suspected Ranking Algorithm Changes
• Apple Appears to be Cracking Down on Incentivized Installs
• Odd Rankings Fluctuations Continue in Apple App Store
• Mobile Game Developers Grapple With Apple Crackdown on Incentivized Installs
• Pocket Gems’ Tap Pet Hotel Scales to #2 on iOS Free & Grossing Charts, Offer Wall Conspicuously Absent

Turner Broadcasting Europe Partners with TeePee Games — Games discovery platform for social, mobile, and online titles, TeePee Games, has announced a new partnership with Turner Broadcasting Europe. Through the partnership, TeePeewill both receive funding for the platform’s development as well as gain access to Turner’s digital games content.

Wooga is 4th Largest Social Games Developer After 20 Months — According to our AppData service, German outfit wooga has become the fourth largest social games developer on Facebook 20 months after its debut. The company, who recently released its newest title, Diamond Dash, currently hosts just almost 21 million monthly active users and just over 3.6 million daily active users.

“Foursquare Day” Proclaimed in New York — Mayor Mike Bloomberg has announced that April 16, — 4/16, the fourth sixteenth of the year - to be “Foursquare Day” in New York City. Events include a myriad of check-in events from around the world.

GREE & mig33 Announce Partnership — Japanese mobile social gaming platform GREE and mobile community mig33 have teamed up this week. With the partnership, GREE has opened its GREE Platform for smartphone, which mig33 will make use of, allowing games to be easily deployed on the platforms of either company.

Google Checkout Purchases to Get More Seamless — Google Checkout is slated to become more seamless according to an interview between Vikas Gupta and Google Checkout Blog. He states that in the near future, they will be bringing Jambool’s — which was acquired by Google seven months ago — Social Gold technology to web applications purchases on Google.

We City Adds Century 21 Brand Promotions — Social-mobile city-builder, We City, from developer ngmoco, is adding in a promotion from real estate agent company, Century 21 (with the help of appssavvy). Until April 26th, users can purchase branded Century 21 buildings for their virtual cities.

Free-to-Play Style Games Could Come to Xbox Live — Proven successful in the social space, IGN has reported a rumor from a “trusted source,” that Microsoft will begin making free-to-play games available through their Xbox Live service. Users will then be able to purchase additional content for these games at their own convenience.

When Kiip announced its $4 million round of funding last week, we were wondering what new could be added to the mobile advertising table if it wasn’t incentivized installs, classic mobile banner or interstitials ads or branded virtual goods.

But Kiip’s take is very novel indeed. The San Francisco based mobile advertising network gives gamers real-world rewards when they hit certain achievements in a game. Companies like group deals startup Homerun.com can offer free goods from local businesses while Sephora can give make-up samples to gamers when they level up. The company has rounded up other big brands like popchips, Sony Dash, Vitamin Water, 1-800-Flowers, Dr. Pepper, GNC, Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s.

It’s a nice way to capitalize on the psychological boost a gamer gets when they unlock a new item or level up.

> Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps.

PopCap Launches New Studio — Games developer, PopCap Games has launched a new development studio by the name of 4th & Battery. The new studio is intended to create “smaller, simpler, and sometimes edgier games,” bringing some of PopCaps “more experimental ideas to customers.” Their first game is Unpleasant Horse for iOS — but it has just been rejected by Apple.

MySpace Executive Joins Tagged — According to TechCrunch, MySpace executive, Tish Whitcraft has left the company to join social network Tagged as its new chief customer officer. In this role she will starting with the replacement of 50 India-based customer service contractors with full time employees in San Francisco.

Factor 5 Veterans From Social Company — Former employees of the closed U.S.-based studio of Factor 5 — the company that developed core games such as Star Wars: Rogue Squadron — have formed a new social company called TouchFactor, says Gamasutra. No titles have been announced.

OpenSocial State of the Union 2011 — The OpenSocial Foundation has announced its State of the Union event for May 12, 2011 between 1pm and 5pm. The free event will involve presentation from community members and will allow other users to participate in a pre-SOTU event before and a Happy Hour/Poster Session after.

Quepasa Partners with Tutudo — Latin-oriented social network Quepasa has partnered with Tutudo this week. Through the partnership, Quepasa will bring Tutudo’s ewallet payment system to social games across the network.

History Channel Gets Into Social Games — The History Channel is getting into social games this week, says EngageDigital, with the launch of Pawn Stars: The Game. The app is developed by Gamenauts.

The Fall of MySpace — Most are aware of the rapidly declining MySpace, but for those looking to catch up, Reuters has released a very in-depth report on its downfall; highlighting weaknesses in the network’s technology, management, and the rise of Facebook.