Kixeye quietly makes big bucks on hardcore Facebook games venturebeat.com Kixeye creates well-designed free-to-play games that generate a lot of revenue from sales of virtual goods... Read more on VentureBeat →

IGT buys Double Down for $500M, moving into Facebook games geekwire.com International Game Technology, which makes real-world casino games and gambling systems, has agreed to pay as much as $500 million to buy Seattle-based Double Down Interactive, a developer of casino-style Facebook games that don’t involve any actual gambling.... Read more on GeekWire →

News from around the Web

Snap Interactive Says Facebook’s New Mobile Channels Boosting Traffic, Revenue

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

Facebook launched a new set of social channels for apps to reach mobile users last month, that includes notifications, search, news feed stories... Read More →

Gamzee’s HTML5-based Skyscraper City Breaks Ground on Facebook

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

As we reported back in June, Gamzee has been working on its first social game, Skyscraper City. Built on its own HTML5-based game engine, the title launched on Facebook at the end of November, but is playable on any device that features an HTML5 compliant web browser. According to AppData, the game now has 3,000 monthly active users. Read More →

Mobile Demo: Jens Begemann, CEO, Wooga

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Watch the CEO of Wooga Games, Jens Begemann, give a demo of their mobile app built on Facebook Platform. Watch →

Will 1B HTML5 phones change the mobile app economy?

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Mobile apps for specific smartphone platforms continue to sell well, but the app economy could be influenced by the sale of HTML5-capable phones. Research firm Strategy Analytics predicts sales of one billion HTML5 phones in 2013, compared to an estimated 336 million this year. While the most popular smartphone — Apple’s iPhone — is a top seller, it pales in comparison to this figure. Read More →

Why news sites should add Facebook’s new ‘Subscribe’ button

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Facebook exec Joanna Shields just revealed at a conference that the social network is poised to roll out a “Subscribe” button that will allow users to subscribe to other users’ updates. Think of it as a Twitter “follow” button for Facebook, embeddable on any site. Read More →

Facebook Adds Subscribe Button For Publishers, Journalists

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Facebook today announced a new Subscribe button for websites and publishers so that readers can follow a writer’s public updates on Facebook.

Readers can subscribe with one click without leaving the third-party site. Then they’ll get the public updates of that writer in their Facebook News Feed. The service is designed to increase interaction with writers and readers and draw more traffic to publisher websites. Read More →

The Facebook Subscribe button is an early Christmas gift for publishers

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Publishers, rejoice. Facebook has just gifted you and your reporters with an early Christmas present packaged in a powerful new tool called the Subscribe button. The button is an off-Facebook extension of the Subscribe feature the social network first introduced in September. The social plugin can be installed on any site, just like the “Like” button, to let visitors subscribe to contributors (a.k.a. your writers, journalists, bloggers and reporters) with a single click. Read More →

Facebook Open Graph: revolutionising the news industry?

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Open Graph is possibly one of Facebook's most interesting elements, as far as news organisations are concerned. It has allowed the social network to permeate the lives of its users like never before, creating opportunities to share more and more of what they do with friends. It has also allowed media organisations to benefit hugely from this social commerce. The 'frictionless sharing experience' provided by Open Graph, which essentially means sharing without having to click a button, has been enormously beneficial to the media. Read More →

Guardian’s Facebook app delivering 1M extra hits a day

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Guardian’s Facebook app is generating almost a million extra page impressions per day, according to figures released by the news outlet and by Facebook.Read More →

How news orgs are reaching millions through Facebook’s new apps

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

It has been over two months since Facebook announced a new class of social news applications — ones that automatically share links to everything a person reads. Now we are learning more about the readership, strategies and effects of these “open graph” or “frictionless sharing” apps. Read More →

Social & Mobile Rule Fab’s Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Of the more than $1.1 million in sales during the period, more than 50% was from people who joined via social sources.

Facebook is far and away our biggest source; more than 25% of the sales/revenue we generated during the period was from people who originally joined Fab via Facebook. Without a doubt, Facebook is far and away our most important source for both new members and for ongoing engagement of our members. Read More →

New way to shop online: Group gifts

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Every year, Americans spend hundreds of dollars on their holiday shopping, much of it on cheap, well-intentioned gifts that the recipients neither want nor need.

Instead of buying another sweater for your sweetie or box of candy for your kid's teacher, why not round up enough people to chip in on something they truly covet, such as a new smartphone, flat-screen television or lavish gift card?

A handful of websites -- Shareagift.com, ChipIn, eBay Group Gifts and others -- now allow you to raise funds for gifts with a few clicks, rather than chasing your friends for checks weeks after a purchase. Read More →

50% Of Ecommerce Site Visitors Are Logged In To Facebook

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Ecommerce sites should consider how they can personalize their sites using Facebook data, as a new study shows 50% of visitors to ecommerce sites are currently logged in to Facebook. Using Facebook social plugins and Connect integrations, sites can leverage Facebook data to show visitors what friends bought or shared, what products relate to their Likes, and which friends they might want to invite. Read More →