We’ve talked about the spread of educational social games in the past, but they’ve never really focused on an advanced niche. The closest would be user-generated quiz type games, with most apps focusing on young learning of math, history, or science. However, British consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser is running with a relatively new Facebook game called poweRBrands that’s intended to teach users a bit more about business and marketing.

Aside from some virtual space elements to the game, the concepts in poweRBrands haven’t really been seen before (at least not in any lime light). It’s an app that has a great deal of potential, but probably won‘t appeal to the average user.

Players start out in a scant little office with only a quick pop-up guide to tell them what they can do. The idea is to accomplish daily tasks in order to work up the corporate ladder from a mere peon to the president of a company. In order to do these tasks, however, they’ll have to refer to their all-important email box.

Each day, users are given a set number of solo tasks to complete. Unlike Facebook games that simply give players a “do task” button and everything is done for them, poweRBrands asks the user to make legitimate decisions that are based in reality. Here is an early example:

“The Senior Brand Manager wants you to decide on the promotion at your retailer for the new Air Wick fragrance. You need to decide between Buy 1 Get 1 Free (BOGOF) or a coupon. Which of these issues are most important?”

The game will then provide a slider bar with multiple elements such as ROI, market penetration, and market share. The player must then adjust each segment of the bar to mirror what they think is the correct percentage of consideration they should give each part. Depending on how accurate they are, they will succeed or fail, with greater cash and experience rewarded for greater accuracy.

Each of these tasks are pretty difficult if you know little about brands and marketing. Thankfully, if you have friends that play, you can get help from them… sort of. Each friend can provide the user with “advice,” once a day, on what the correct answer is, but what is interesting is that the accuracy of this advice will depend directly on how high level their profile is.

This is obviously one of the major social mechanics to the game, but it is also worth noting that once all email-based, solo tasks are done, users can kill some time performing “team actions” in which they recruit their friends to do various tasks around the office such as “Make the Tea.” These tasks will take anywhere from five to thirty minutes, and will earn both in-game cash and “team spirit.” However, the game never really seems to explain what, if anything, spirit does.

Beyond these task elements, users will also receive random phone calls to do tasks similar to those found in the email, and will even occasionally get a pop-up, multiple choice “bonus question” on their “smartphone.”

The more tasks completed, obviously, the higher the level the player earns. As they grow, their title continually updates, and they actually travel around the world to places such as India, Australia, and Europe. It doesn’t really appear to change much beyond what can be seen outside the office windows, but since it is tied to level, it’s pretty cool to view the map and see where friends are (of course, their offices can also be visited). Additionally, level also gates what items can be purchased for one’s office, including some shameless brand placements such as Lysol products, French’s mustard, Clearasil, and so on.

On the downside, poweRBrands, while having some good social mechanics, is a bit boring at its core. Granted, players can decorate a 2D virtual office space, but the means to earn cash to do so is very dull. The whole slider bar concept just isn’t going to be appealing to the average user, and the detailed, realistic decisions that have to be made will likely prove very difficult for most. This is a game that does not appear to be marketed to the average Facebook user in general.

Though it isn’t a direct recruitment tool, the app does have a number of links to Reckitt Benckiser (RB) careers, blogs, and various accounts. According to RB’s Global Communications Director, Andraea Dawson-Shepherd, and what she said to Worlds in Motion, “[poweRBrands] is a great way to introduce students and early careers sales people and marketers to our culture — and we hope that some of them may look further at our website and other career information.”

With this in mind, the target audience may not find RB’s app all that dull. Just by looking at the questions themselves, there is a tremendous amount of thought and problem solving to be had. Without claiming any sort of expertise in marketing or branding, many of the tasks in the game do seem fairly accurate, and those interested in such things may very well relish in the game.

In short, if you are an everyday Facebook user, then poweRBrands is very likely not the game for you. That said, if you are someone that loves problem solving and has an astute interest in marketing business and learning something about it, then this is an app that is probably worth a closer look.

New Zealand-based developer called Runaway is seeking to enlighten social game players about the Amazon Rainforest first Facebook title, Flutter. With simple mechanics, a zen-like atmosphere, and educational value, it’s certainly a game that could certainly teach users a thing or two about ecology.

Flutter is broken up into two parts: exploration and virtual spaces, with the former allowing for enhancement of the latter. Regardless of preference, the game’s presentation does make for an aesthetically pleasing experience, and while not all its elements are original, everything feels well integrated. Coupled with unobtrusive awareness blurbs, Flutter, thus far, seems off to a good start.

Players start off in the rainforest as a butterfly of their choice. From here they are warped into a small section of the rainforest to begin exploring. It’s all fairly simple in an exploration-adventure sort of way. Using the mouse pointer, players fly about collecting honeydew (the game’s currency) and interacting with the various flora and fauna they find.

This is where some of the educational/awareness aspects of the game come into play. As they explore, users will find various “spirits” floating about the world that give quests (which can be solo or involve friends — starting quest is to simply visit friends). Each quest will have a set amount of things to do in the world (e.g. find two fungi) and will often give some small bit of information about the rainforest itself and the life involved in it.

Much of Flutter consists of mechanics like diet or growth cycles. As an example, players may find a specific species of beetle. They have the option to feed it, but must first find, in the world, what it eats — in this case, fungi. Once they have fungi, they can feed the creature in order to gain a chunk of experience (experience is also earned through actions within the virtual space area of the game). In addition, flowers, with a mere click, can be interacted with too.

What makes flowers interesting, however, is that they grant honeydew (you’re basically pollinating them) instead of experience, and water can be used to grow the flower bed, granting more income the larger it grows. This is where the virtual space aspects begin to come into play.

Each user is granted their own personal space (which, of course, friends can visit) called a “Grove.” Here, the game takes on a sort of animal husbandry effect. Not only can users decorate with an abundances of flora and foliage, but they can grow and care for butterflies, with the game walking them through each stage of its life cycle.

The grove also comes with a few other interesting features. One of them is a “Red Bromeliad” flower that collects water on a daily basis for the above mentioned flower beds, as well as a “Social Flower” that blooms and grows as friends care for their own groves. Beyond this, there is also a fruit tree that can be nurtured daily, which will presumably produce fruit for use in the world once fully grown.

Obviously, as a virtual space, this is the main area where level and experience comes into play, gating what can be purchased at any given time. The space appears to physically grow in size as users level up, and outside of the grove, more areas of the rainforest unlock for exploration.

Unfortunately, based on the map of the rainforest, the world seems fairly small, meaning that the exploration aspect does run the risk of getting repetitive and rather dull. While the virtual space might continue to evolve and change, the world is going to remain static without continual updates. To some, this may not matter, but a lot of the initial feel of the rainforest will be lost.

In fact, this feel, this presentation, very much warrants mention. The game looks beautiful and the music is incredibly zen sounding — with a little tweaking of the point at which it loops, the music could easily just blend into the background to create a very appealing experience.

Overall, the virtual space aspects of Flutter feel like they outweigh the exploration mechanics in the long run. Early on, they have about equal weight, but the latter feels as if it would become repetitive after a while. All the same, the game does a pretty sound job of subtly incorporating some educational facts about the rainforest and the creatures that live there. As a brand new game, it’s hard to say how it will do, but either way, it’s certainly worth checking out.

There have been a number of social games in recent month seeking to teach people something new, or at the very least, get them thinking. The latest in education gaming, however, hails all the way from Spain with the brain-training app InGenius, by Zed Worldwide. Available on the Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry, its a game that has most of its bases covered. However, our core interest lies in the recently launched Facebook version where the game already garners north of 170,000 monthly active users. Of course, this begs the question as to why. Here is our closer look.

InGenius is best compared to older titles such as Who Has The Biggest Brain? and Brain Buddies. It’s a compilation of various mini-games intended to test one’s thinking skills and rate their level of brain power, so-to-speak. With each of the four games technically sound, the game feels lacking in its sense of style, and its initial hook, a bit weak. That said, it does have some rather curious social elements that do add a good deal of flavor to the basic concept.

There are four regions of the brain tested in InGenius: Memory, perception, math, and logic. Each section is timed, and despite being common choices in such games, each one does its job fairly well, although the memory game is the weakest of the four.

In it, players are granted a grid of cards, with some of them turning over for a few seconds, revealing some shapes. The idea, is to choose from which of four shapes appeared after the cards are flipped back face down. However, on an initial play through, the cards like to flip back over after you make a selection. This happens, just before the next round of new flips, and as one can see, can get very confusing; especially when under a time limit.

Though memory gets annoying, the other three work fine. Perception is a game of determining which of four colored orbs has the most on screen. It sounds very easy, and it is at first, but as the user progresses, more and more orbs are added and even begin to move about.

Math, on the other hand, is less interesting as it is merely simple arithmetic. Oddly, players do not actually solve the equations, but just state whether the answer given is true or false. It’s a little dull, honestly, but then again, the math sections for most of these games are rarely exciting.

The last game is logic, which, is fairly amusing and about as interesting as the perception game. It’s a simple matter of determining which image, in a set of images, does not belong. It’s very easy at first, but as more images are added, and time widdles away, it does get pretty hard to be accurate. As an example, the common trend could be flowers, then the next one might be plants. Since the game reuses images a lot, something that fit in the previous category may not fit in the next one, forcing the player to be extremely careful and not choose out of impulse. However, under the duress of time, that becomes quite a challenge.

As was stated before, each of the four games are technically sound. Nevertheless, they really feel lacking in the style department. They feel very basic and don’t have much of an interesting flair to them. In Zed’s defense, there are, actually, 12 other games to play, besides the ones described. Unfortunately, each one must be purchased with a virtual currency dubbed InGenius Coins (which, curiously, can also be bought with Facebook Credits). The problem is, the drab mini-games the player starts with just don’t feel like enough of a hook to truly coax the player into wanting to buy the other games. Typically speaking, players that actually make purchases tend to do so after getting addicted to a game.

There is one factor that helps in this matter. Socially, the game has basic achievements and leaderboards, with an amusing visual of what the player is “smart enough” to invent (e.g. shoulder pads), but what is much more interesting is the concept of “The Brain Race.” It’s really nothing more than analytics, but InGenius takes the time to measure who is the smartest from day to day based on gender, age, and even country. As its self-reported demographics currently stand, the average “InGenius Level” is favoring women, and players under 18.

Overall, InGenius feels typical. It does have a lot of nice mini-games to test one’s “intelligence,” but having them cost a virtual currency right off the bat doesn’t feel like a wise move. The initial four games just don’t seem addictive or stylish enough to really hook the player and coax them into buying the others. That said, the social, competitive elements are a nice edition, and do add a nice, extra layer, of novelty to the game. In the end, InGenius is a decent game, but it truly needs something more to really make itself shine.

The addictive nature of video games has often led educators to try adapting them for the classroom. Add in the virality of social gaming, and you’ve got a potent mix in which players may not even realize they’re learning. We’re seeing an ever-increasing number of educational games hit Facebook, the web and mobile platforms like the iPhone, all trying to discover the magic combination that will make traditional schooling passe.

What defines these educational games, or “edutainment” for short? It’s not necessarily teaching specific subjects like psychology or geometry, but rather the intention of expanding and enhancing the mind — meanwhile conquering the educational stigma of being boring. Here’s a look at what a few developers have done in the first half of 2010:

FreshPlanet – FreshPlanet first came to our attention early this month when its Facebook application Crazy Cow Music Quiz appeared at #8 on our emerging Facebook games list. Crazy Cow is quite successful at this point, with over a million monthly active users and a clever trivia design that exposes users to new music.

That’s not directly educational, but it turns out that FreshPlanet also has a quartet of “RedFish” iPad learning apps for young children: RedFish 4 Kids, RedFish Piano 4 Kids, RedFish Puzzle – The RedFish, and Redfish – Balloon Bursting. The first is basically a compilation of the others, but it’s a great game for young kids. Filled with vibrant colors, the title works with numbers, counting, music, colors, shapes, and so on. If you’ve got an iPad, Redfish may be a good introduction for your tot to learning games.

Tiny Planets — The most common type of educational game is tailored to small children. However, the folks over at Tiny Planets focus on a bit older crowd, kids aged six to 14.

Based on the Tiny Planets animated TV series, this game offers six “planets” for users to visit consisting of simple games, web videos, social networking, a virtual world, goods, and currency, and, of course, learning opportunities.

The biggest attention getter for us, however, was the virtual world in which players can create and decorate their very own planet, buying new avatars and items for their terrestrial inhabitance with the virtual currency (KEYs). KEYs can also be used to buy more videos and games.

Tiny Planets is rich with both entertaining and educational activities that focus on space, conservation, science, creativity, and critical thinking skills, which can be accessed via quizzes, puzzles, and even interactive books for home schooling.

Mind Candy – Although we covered it earlier this year, Mind Candy also warrants another mention. Their Pet Society’esque virtual world for kids, Moshi Monsters, is a wonderful and safe place for kids of virtually all ages to interact and enjoy. Beyond its attractive style, Mind Candy cleverly masks the learning aspects as mini-games focusing on subjects like math or spelling and granting an in-game currency, Rox, as a reward. Players may not even realize they’re learning something, as the primary focus is on getting extra cash so they can buy bigger and better stuff in the virtual overworld.

As it stands, Moshi Monsters looks small on Facebook, floating between 18,000 and 20,000 MAUs according to AppData. However, just this month, Mind Candy reported that the game had reached 20 million registered users and has even signed a book deal about the game with the Penguin Group.

Gameloft – Not all learning is for kids. Another good pick that teaches a bit about American history is fantastic for all ages. It’s the iPhone title remake, Gameloft‘s The Oregon Trail. Originally created by MECC, Oregon Trail was one of the best-selling educational games of all time (right up there with Carmen Sandiego). Now with cleaned up visuals and a new presentation, it’s ready to share the hardships of the Trail with a whole new generation.

ADS Software Group – Here’s another interesting iPhone app if you’re interested in geography. Updated and refreshed in April, ADS’ app, World Countries, contains maps from around the world. Beyond direct information and flash cards, the game also has various geographic quizzes about capitals, flags, maps, and so on. Granted, quizzes aren’t always the most extravagant way to learn, but with OpenFeint leaderboard integration, friend challenges, and achievement postings to both Facebook and Twitter, there’s an added level of competition and immersion.

On5 - Frankly, quizzes are an excellent way to teach people new things, but as suggested above, they can also be a bit dull. So On5 decided to take a game show approach with their iPhone app Quizarium; also updated in April. Based around subjects such as nature, science, sports, and so on, players compete against one another in one minute rounds for each question. Every 12 seconds that no correct answer is given, a hint is issued (e.g. the number of letters).

What makes this game even better, however, is that in addition to playing with other people synchronously, it also has Plus+ integration so that users can share achievements through the social platform and even compete via the various leaderboard systems.

Between past reviewed titles and newer ones, there is one lesson to take home: when it comes to educational games, the they mask their educational aspects, the better they seem to do. Simply look at Wooga’s Brain Buddies app from last year: currently, it’s just shy of 3 million MAUs, with around 212,000 daily active users.

Regardless, each of these titles have something to offer. And what we’ve listed above is merely the tip of the iceberg as any number of educational social games litter the networks of Facebook, OpenFeint, Plus+, Scoreloop and can be found on any of the iDevices as well.

A few more worthy mentions include the iPhone title, Brain Balance Pro from Orangefish that takes an approach reminiscent of “Who Has the Biggest Brain?” to design and is part of the OpenFeint network; Place Map HD on the iPad from Voon; and our previously reviewed user-generated quiz game, Sporcle from Sporcle Inc. It may not be a text book, but with thousands of fun quizzes from thousands of users, it’s unlikely you won’t learn something.

We still have yet to see anything challenge the legacy of the original Oregon Trail or Carmen Sandiego (even the new Oregon Trail). Nevertheless, inch by inch, developers are getting there.

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Facebook— tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, June 21st, 2010

• Big Changes by Facebook Revealed in This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Apps by MAU
• Updated Facebook Stats Show Five Quiz Applications With 42 Million Users
• Facebook App Aims to Help Control Diabetes
• As Facebook Continues Testing Credits, Some Developers Worry About Costs
• In London, Facebook Shares More Details on Location Service, Social Plugins and European Traffic

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

• Exclusive: Discussing the Future of Facebook and the Facebook Ecosystem with CEO Mark Zuckerberg
• World Cup and ‘Toy Story’ Appear in This Week’s Facebook’s Top 20 Pages
• Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience, Is Now Available
• Seven Languages Grow, Three Hold Steady on Facebook in June 2010
• Note for Developers: Mandatory Facebook User Permissions Upgrade Coming June 30th

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

• Quizzes and Twitter Appear on This Week’s List of Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• As AT&T Gears Up Social Media Customer Service Efforts, A Look at Its Facebook Activity
• Fan Appz Building White-Label App Business for Marketers on Facebook
• The Future of Monetization Will Include More Offers and Bigger Brands
• Facebook.com/lol – an Official Company Page for Comedy
• Twitter App Wants to Help You Find Facebook Friends to Follow

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

• Facebook Hires This Week: Oracle, Microsoft, UT-Austin and Yahoo!
• Inside the Numbers: Facebook’s Third-Largest Country, Indonesia, Uses English Heavily
• Facebook Hires White House Staffer for Global Policy Position
• Ads API Profile: Alchemy’s Cascading Ad Creation, Analytics, and Auto-Optimization
• ComScore: Facebook Grew to Be Tenth-Largest US Video Site in May 2010

Friday, June 25th, 2010

• Chase Community Giving Makes a Comeback on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• Facebook Turns on PayPal for Ad Payments
• Facebook Jersey Personalization App Scores Millions of World Cup Fans
• Statistics Update Reveal that More Than One Million Web Sites are Using Facebook’s Platform
• Facebook Graphs Show Relative Frequency of World Cup Keywords in Status Updates
• Facebook Roundup: Foursquare, Development, Buddy Media, Zuck in Europe, Love, and More

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Facebook— tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, June 14th, 2010

• Quiz Monster and City Games Lead Off This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• Note to Facebook Page Owners: Any Page Admin Is Now Removable
• Where are the Peanut Labs/RockYou Offers in Facebook’s Credits Payment Options?
• Apple’s iOS 4 Includes Option to Upload Videos to Facebook
• Facebook Expands Free Credits Promotion in CrowdStar’s Hello City

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

• The World Cup Joins Music and TV on This Wekk’s Top 20 Facebook Pages
• Mideast Growth on Facebook Fell Back to Normal in May 2010
• Last Week to Pre-Order Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience
• Post Voicemail to Facebook Walls with Voice Wall
• Speed of New Facebook Graph API with PHP SDK Slowing Developer Adoption
• User Survey Results: Which Ads Do Facebook Users Like Most (and Least)?

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

• Buzzeo Acquisition is Latest Move in Context Optional’s Facebook Business Expansion
• Nielsen, Compete Show Normal US Traffic Gains for Facebook in May 2010
• Facebook Adds Likes to Comments
• Facebook Tests Using Profile Picture Thumbnails in More Feeds Stories
• Performance Advertising’s Future on Social Platforms: Bright, but with Room for Improvement
• RockYou Apps Win a Reprieve on This Week’s List of Facebook Gainers by DAU

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

• Home Page Headline Urges Users to Invite Their Skype Contacts to Join Facebook
• Nigeria Regained Lost Ground in May 2010, Leading African Growth
• Facebook’s New Hires This Week: From Loopt, Microsoft, and Yahoo
• Who’s Playing Social Games Outside the US? App Demographics for Facebook’s Second Largest Market, the UK
• The Top 25 Facebook Pages People Like Most

Friday, June 18th, 2010

• Facebook Ads: Do Users Really Love Gaming and Hate Dating
• Report: Facebook Was Profitable in 2009, with Revenue Up to $800M
• Out of Zynga’s Confusing Deal Terms Come Big New Fundings
• Compete Shows Entertainment Sites Sending More Traffic to Facebook in May 2010
• CrowdStar Runs Its Own Virtual Goods Campaign to Help Out with the Oil Spill
• Facebook Roundup: Localeze, Videos, Virtual Goods, Privacy, Amazon, TiVo and More

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

• Facebook for iPhone 3.1.3 Brings Video Watching, Event Walls, and Better Pictures
• Facebook Engineer: Key Issue Slowing Down Graph API with PHP SDK Fixed

Android Market Share Hits 20% – According to new data released by Quantcast, Android’s Google OS has reached 19.9% in operating system market share for mobile devices. The iPhone OS (iOS) still leads, however, at 58.8%.

Criterion Capital Partners Acquires Bebo – Earlier this week, financial advisory firm Criterion Capital Partners, LLC (CCP) announced that it has acquired the social media network Bebo from AOL Inc. Not all details behind the deal have been revealed, but CCP is said to have purchased the social network for $10 million or less and has assumed all rights to and complete global operating control of the youth-oriented site.

GodFinger Launches Globally – For the longest time, the only way to get a hold of ngmoco’s GodFinger outside of Canada was through the iPad. This week, the company launched the free-to-play app on a global scale for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

Ning Adds Game Channels – Wednesday, social network platform Ning announced partnerships with CafePress and HeyZap. Now, users that use Ning to create their own social networks will be able to integrate custom CafePress shops that sell branded items, as well as HeyZap’s collection of pay-to-play games to their networks.

GameCoins Going Mobile – Sometric’s virtual currency portal GameCoins.com looks to be expanding its market. Chief executive Ian Swanson says the company will soon move beyond its typically supported games and begin adding support for the mobile games space as well.

Worlize to Build User-Generated Social Gaming Platform – According to TechCrunch a small startup by the name of Worlize is launching the private beta of its coming product this week. Unfortunately, all that is known at this time is that it is being called the first user-created social gaming and chat platform for Facebook and other such networks.

Nexon May Get Facebook Connect – According to CEO Daniel Kim, Nexon America is currently “researching” ways that it could integrate Facebook Connect with its currently collection of free-to-play games. Moreover, the integration would not be game to game but rather based on a player’s account, thus affecting any Nexon games the user currently plays.

Social Gaming Network Raises Funds – Though they’ve been quiet for some time, Social Gaming Network has just recently come back onto the scene after raising $2 million in financing from Tomorrow Ventures. Additionally, the social developer has also launched its newest title EXO-Planet Elite for the various iDevices.

Microsoft’s Xbox Cashes in on Virtual Goods - Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, via the Xbox 360, has apparently been raking in the cash with its virtual goods business. This revenue includes movies, music, content pack downloads and “bite-sized” games in addition to avatars’ clothes and accessories and has been growing steadily, according to Microsoft executive Dennis Durkin. With 25 million Xbox Live members around the world, about 56% upgraded to the Gold subscription service ($50 a year).

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Facebook— tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, June 7th, 2010

• Daily Quotes Take Over on This Week’s Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• Yahoo’s Latest Attempts to Get More Social: More Facebook Integrations
• ComScore: Facebook’s May US Traffic Nears Recrod… for Number of New Users
• Facebook Insights Analytics Tool Officially Launches
• Looking to Help Developers Grow, Facebook Tests New Bookmarks Feature

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

• Zynga Again Leads Our Weekly Top 20 Facebook Pages List
• Announcing Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience
• Indonesia Became Facebook’s Third-Largest Country in May 2010
• Who’s Using Facebook Around the World? The Demographics of Facebook’s Top 15 Country Markets
• Surprise: Android Has More than 7 Million Facebook Users
• Orange Has a Funny, Growing Text-to-Speech Facebook App

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

• Mobile Apps Add Almost Two Million New DAU on This Week’s List of Fast Growers on Facebook
• European Offer Provider SponsorPay Takes $5M Funding
• Facebook Releases Updated Multi-Friend Selector Tool with Contact List Importing
• Ford Will Give Facebook Fans The First Look At The 2011 Explorer
• Facebook Brings Upcoming Birthdays Back to the Home Page

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

• Brazil’s Growth Rate Fell, While Other Latin American Countries Remained Steady in May 2010
• Facebook Integration Now Live in Bing Social Search Results
• Facebook’s Video Stats Show Growth in Uploads and Views
• Investment Opportunities in Social Apps – Not Just Publishers and Not Just in the US

Friday, June 11th, 2010

• Creative Games Dominate This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• Spice Up Those Facebook Photos with CutePhoto
• Facebook’s New Hires This Week
• Former PayPal Leaders Debate: Can Facebook Credits Replace PayPal?
• Facebook Tests Free Credits Promotion in Games Dashboard, Featuring CrowdStar’s Hello City
• Note: Facebook Working on Fixing Fan Count Bug for Pages
• Facebook Roundup: Flickr, China, Foursquare, Bangladesh, U.S. Facebook Stats and More

AdParlor Releases Whitepaper on Application Installs — A new whitepaper from adParlor (Purchasing Facebook Application Installs) was released early this past week that contains metrics and useful insights regarding Click Through Rates, Conversion Rates, Cost Per Install, as well as interesting facts and quotes from a number of big Facebook developers.

Here’s one interesting quote from Zynga: “Once you’ve acquired the majority of early adopters, CPIs in a particular market can increase by 3-5x from Day 1 CPI!” Another factoid includes the top six factors that influence CPI pricing on Facebook Ads: country targeted, creativity, target market, flow from click to conversion, application saturation, and market conditions, with the last capable of modifying a CPI rate up to 40%.

Danal Partners with Marquee Names in Online Gaming – eCommerce firm Danal, Inc. is launching the BilltoMobile service for partners across the US, granting their users a means to make online gaming purchases through their mobile phone accounts. Among the partners are Nexon American, NHN, Perfect World, Ntreev, YNK Interactive, Fantage, Cyberstep, Gravity, Three Rings, Global Tongue, KBS World, MMOABC, Onnet, Planet Cazmo, Ray Flame, Thebroth.com, Uforia, Xivio, and Gamepot USA.

Fortumo Launches In-App Payments for Android – Android applications are getting a new way to monetize this week, as mobile payments provider Fortumo launches its own in-app payments for Android developers in Europe, Asia, and the US. Competitors Boku and Zong both launched Android platforms last week.

Ubisoft Announces Digital Game Publishing Business – Former Microsoft game maker Chris Early has become the executive in charge of French developer Ubisoft‘s new digital game publishing business, according to VentureBeat, where he will focus on operating games as an online service, as well as create apps and games for Facebook, the iPhone and other connected platforms. The ultimate goal is to launch these games on the digital platforms in tandem with an intellectual property’s release on the more hardcore gaming systems.

Ubisoft has already been behind at least four Facebook titles we’re aware of, including Vineyard Country, Castle & Co, and TickTock.

Simulating Application Growth – Here’s a cool new toy from Jon Radoff: as the social market for games is always fluctuating, he has created a cohesive spreadsheet that allows users to dynamically manipulate a number of variables to that will simulate your application’s growth; variables such as the “k-Factor” (essentially how viral it is), average time to spread, and average time a user remains a customer.

[image via Radoff.com]

Mobile Advertisement Threatened on iPhone – Monday, Apple proposed its latest developer terms, which could drastically hinder monetization and consumer experiences on the iPhone. If enforced, these terms would prohibit companies with competing mobile technologies as well as anyone whose primary business is not mobile ads from providing ad services on the Apple device. This includes major players such as Google and AdMob.

Playdom Plans to Localize in Europe – Successful social games developer Playdom is seeking to break into the European market by creating localized renditions of some of its top titles (i.e. Mobsters and new title Big City Life) in French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

Mopay Now Available in Central & South America – Mobile payment provider Mopay is expanding its mobile phone payment platform. The service is adding options to buy virtual goods and services in 18 new countries in both Central and South America, including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile.

MySpace Launches World Cup Profile – The World Cup is underway, and now users will be able access the MySpace, World Cup Profile page. From the page, users will be able to view video feeds, watch live games, see real time tweets about the World Cup, and even sign a petition to bring the World Cup to the United States.

Super Rewards Creates “User Feedback Loop” – In the ongoing quest to better monetize advertisements and offers for social game players, Super Rewards has launched a new customization feature dubbed the User Feedback Loop. The new toy will allow players to provide instant feedback one which ad offers interest them the most. Conversely, they can also remove offers just as easily, thus gradually customizing their offer walls to show only their preferred ads.

MyTown Upgrades Again – Once again, Booyah is looking to improve its widely popular, location-based iPhone title, MyTown, with the release of MyTown 4.0. With the new version, users will not only gain a brand new user interface, but will be greeted with any number of new features such as creating items at properties, trading between friends, earning collectibles dubbed “Stamps,” new abilities, and 10 new levels. Moreover, check-ins will now have a recharge time, until players reach level 70, when they become unlimited.

Habbo Hotel Users Get Robbed – Popular teen-oriented virtual world, Habbo Hotel is seeing some crime trouble as Finnish police are investigating up to 400 cases in virtual goods theft. The virtual items vary in value, but some Habbo players are reporting losses of up to €1000, says BBC News. The scammers target users using fake web sites to steal usernames and passwords in what is known as a phishing scam, and thus far, police are treating the thefts as cyber-crimes and have already searched five homes in Finland. Similar in respect to the virtual currency extortain case in China a year ago, this is yet another demonstration on just how “real” the value of virtual goods are.

FreeAppADay Joins the iPhone Distribution Market – Rather than develop games themselves, FreeAppADay.com is helping iPhone developers distribute their titles. Similar to Aurora Feint’s recently created FreeGameoftheDay.com, FreeAppADay offers visitors links to a daily, free, Device titles. Now, the company is launching its service in the App Store with a new application, according to Pocket Gamer, and it will be available come June 8th. Moreover, the launch is said to include titles from “the biggest developer partner yet.”

AdMob Expands into iPad – After letting go nearly a tenth of its employees after its acquisition by Google, AdMob is expanding its advertising monetization network once again with an iPad SDK. Often used as a means to earn revenue for any number of social, casual, and mobile games, iPad developers will now be able to integrate the network’s ads within their apps. Moreover, the company states that the SDK is universal across all iPhone OS devices.

3Dchat Looks to Combine Facebook-Like Features & Virtual Worlds – Earlier this week, 3Dchat LLC and Golemlabs Studios announced the beta launch of a curious new “social” virtual world aptly named 3Dchat. The world is said to include features reminiscent of social networks such as Facebook in which players use their real identities. However, to keep things safe, the developer intends to limit access of users that do not go through its “proprietary advanced identity verification service;” a service that will use outside companies such as eBay or PayPal to confirm users are both over 18 and who they claim to be.

Moshi Monsters Reaches New Milestones – When we covered the kids-oriented virtual world, Moshi Monster, a few months ago we were impressed by most of what it had to offer, but developer Mind Candy has stated that the world is doing better than we expected, gaining around 150,000 new users every day. The current grand total: 20 million registered users. In fact, the game has become so popular with children, that Mind Candy is even signing a book series deal about the virtual world with the Penguin Group.

Foursquare Banned in China – A sea of tweets from Chinese location sharers are claiming that the location-based game Foursquare has been blocked by the Chinese government. According to TechCrunch, the ban is presumably due to users checking into Tiananmen Square on the sensitive dates of June 3rd and 4th where Chinese protesters were killed back in 1989.

Social Gold Partners With GASH & MyCard – Virtual goods monetization and payment platform Social Gold announced two new Asian partnerships this past week: Gamania’s GASH and Soft World’s MyCard. Users of these cards will be able to purchase virtual goods  in any game or virtual world supported by Social Gold payments. Moreover, the partnership will expand Social Gold’s currency support to the Malaysian ringgit as well as the Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore dollar.

GodFinger Gets Huge Update – We enjoyed the ngmoco iPad title, GodFinger, when it first came out. Now the iPhone rendition is getting a major upgrade with its latest 1.2 update. With the update, players will be able to further customize their planet, gain “Super Followers,” view a larger galaxy map of friends, and visit a larger, improved Awe Store (complete with pirates). Unfortunately, 1.2 is not yet global and only available within the Canadian App Store for iPhone.