> What would be the point anyway in knowing my friend had a high score in a game I wouldn't play? It's only spam.

Most of us hate this kind of stuff. I know I do. It's super annoying. Furthermore, as a game developer, it would kill me a little bit to "sell out" like that.

However, this is why Zynga is worth a bazillion dollars. They understand the power of "virals". Have you ever talked to a Zynga employee? "Virals virals virals". They are one of the few companies who really understand the power of converting social pressure into profit.

Yep, they really do get it, but the fact that it makes money is pretty much the only good thing about this new version of spam.

I would happily share meaningful (in game context) things, and I think those would convert better anyway.

Do you think you're an average person?

Do you think the average person would respond "yes" to that question?

On average, perhaps yes

For some sets one could average against.

"problem number 1 with Facebook games : they are spam machines!"

Really?

I remember when I first joined Facebook, and my News Feed came to be quickly dominated by Zynga items, and my notifications came to be dominated by reminders to see how fast I can type A-Z.

I remember last summer after I joined Facebook as an intern, when the head of the newly-created Games team announced that they would collapse all the Zynga notifications into "Bob and Sally are playing Farmville."

Now, I don't remember the last time I saw any Facebook game spam.

I hear people say this a lot, but is it true?

(Just checked my last 300 feed entries. There was one notification about someone beginning to play Jeopardy. Spam machine indeed.)

It is not true anymore but people remember the bad things, right? It was horrible maybe year or two back. Gazillion of notifications, wall completly covered with app spam... Now it's quite good. If anything appears it is very easy to hide the app, no more notifications (invites or whatever), .. quite clean.

On the other hand. Those polls are The Evil now. Absolutely no way to get rid of them (w/o using external scripts).

I never really realized this had stopped. I thought it was due to the fact that I clicked so often on the "Hide publications from game X" that now I had hidden most of them. I think it all comes down to the fact that I remember clearly how bad it was because I had an emotional reaction to that spam ("fucking farmville get the fuck out of my feed arrrrrrr!!!") instead of now that I didn't even notice it one bit. How could the situation I didn't see come to mind before the one that got me pissed a few months ago? And that's why everybody still says that games on Facebook = spam.

It looks promising. Now, will it offer a way to play Go?

As long as they offer a REPL I'd be happy

I think that's available IRL via ARM and HAND. Parallel processing included, though it's not overly necessary for a board game :)

My bet is the Zyngas will adapt and do "social" marketing by paying people to promote their games through shares.

> What would be the point anyway in knowing my friend had a high score in a game I wouldn't play?

the serious answer is that it keeps you constantly aware of the game, increasing the overall probability that you'll sign up.

Yes, the blog says "you can comfortably share your latest high score--your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too."

Sounds like a winner to me. I won't have to keep blocking every new game that comes along.

Look, guys, you have to realize that even though many frown upon the social games market, it's a niche market that's here to stay. After all, social networks are mostly entertainment media and people have been playing games even before they learned to write. Social games are dumb most of the time, a mindless way to interact with friends, but people like them. The "games" tab certainly seems compelling, however they need to be aggressive on removing spam apps. That's exactly what facebook didn't do and what zynga took advantage of to the maximum possible degree. Social app developers are almost always aggressive about exploiting user behavior and communication channels to funnel growth. If google is not vigilant about enforcing their rules correctly and tuning their algorithms to be fair to all developers, it's going to be the facebook nightmare all over again.