Facebook (News - Alert) just recently celebrated 10 years on the web. It certainly seems as though there are plenty of other companies who should be celebrating right along with the social media company. Game companies, especially, should be plenty happy to see Facebook chugging right along. Last week, at the GDC, Facebook revealed it is now sending 735 million referrals to games every single day.
That wasn’t the only big news story that came out of the conference. Facebook said that those who play games on the social media site play those games on mobile and desktop formats. When adding those numbers together there are more than 375 million people playing the games every month.
Dan Morris, head of Facebook’s mobile games partnership, talked to gaming website Gamasutra after his company’s presentation and talked about what the numbers mean when talking about mobile and desktop gaming, infused with social media.
"It excites us because it's a true indication of how many people our service are running into a game every day, and because the number is so high every day it really speaks to the place games have in people's lives," Morris said.
"It's just demonstrably the case that people who are playing a game both sides of the equation are more engaged," Morris added. "If you connect that mobile game to a desktop version of it, you're going to be glad you did, generally speaking."
In the past, games have gone from mobile to Facebook once they have proven successful. Morris said he hopes that these latest referral numbers will convince developers to change the way they’ve been doing business. Morris claims the numbers show that Facebook is a great “discovery engine” for mobile developers who are still trying to find an audience.
Game developers are obviously looking to have a good relationship with Facebook and vice versa. That doesn’t mean the social media site has a good relationship with everyone. Recently Facebook shut down its messenger for Windows with nary an explanation. That kind of behavior might continue to keep some developers away from the site.
Edited by Cassandra Tucker
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