by samFor some time now, Facebook has been king of social media gaming. Everybody with an Internet connection knows what Farmville is and has probably wasted hours of their time trying to beat their friend’s Bejewelled scores or win their chips at a hand of Texas Hold’em. But there’s a new player on the field now, and its name is Google.
The search engine giants recently upped the ante against Facebook in the battle for social network superiority, introducing a small selection of “hand-picked” games to their new service, Google+. Some of the games already lined up include Angry Birds, Sudoku, and Zynga Poker, ending Facebook’s reign as the exclusive Zynga Games platform. The team at Google believes that, although most of their titles are already popular on Facebook, they have made it far more user-friendly by making those annoying achievement updates separate from the general news stream and instead embedding them in a specific gaming feed. Various sources have also reported that Google plans to undercut Facebook by offering lower fees and other competitive perks in an attempt to lure as many titles to the new platform as possible.
The real question is, will this bring the extra surge of traffic to the service that Google+ needs to make a mark on Facebook? Hypothetically speaking, if Google were to nullify Facebook over time and become the key source of social networking, strategies for SMO would have to be rethought to focus on Google+. Not only this, but the integration of +1 in search results ranking (combined with the increased popularity of the Google social service) would also influence SEO tactics in years to come.
Back in reality, it’s unlikely Facebook will let this happen without putting up a barbaric fight. Upon learning about Google’s gaming plans, Facebook coincidentally announced a massive upgrade to their service. With their new “GameTicker” feature, the right-hand side of a gaming user’s page will be dedicated to a feed of friends’ gaming updates and achievements. In addition to this, a new expanded-screen feature will be introduced, along with a new bookmarking feature for easy access to users’ favourite games and apps.
It feels apt to summarise a post about gaming with a loose boxing analogy: “In the heavyweight title fight for ‘world social network gaming champion’, Google has thrown the first punch. While Facebook has kept their guard up so far, will it have the stamina to continuously fight the newcomer Google away from its reigning title?”
One thing is certain: the battle for social network power is far from finished, and gaming is going to play a huge part in it. Any Internet marketing consultant worth their wage will advise you to keep a close eye on what happens between these two companies over the coming days, weeks, months, and years, and you would be wise to follow these words closely.