Did social games kill Facebook’s social graph?
Social games have been instrumental in driving revenue to Facebook and extending the length of its user’s visits. Zynga, the most prominent social game creator, has even negotiated a special, five-year strategic partnership with Facebook. At first glance it seems that social games can only provide benefits to the $50 billlion company, but a deeper look reveals a problem that diminishes the integrity of the social network.
The root of the problem is well documented: Facebook has intimacy problems. Paul Adams, a long-time Google UX engineer, clearly defined the problems in a 224 page slideshow 6 months ago. Soon after, Facebook tried fixing their problems with an update to the Groups functionality, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. Facebook followed up by stealing Paul Adams from Google, and presumably another revision of Groups is in the works. The problem is also detailed by Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups, in his Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network.
This problem has been around since before social games, but the games have made it a significantly harder problem for Facebook to fix. As a way to encourage users to invite their real friends to play games, game makers like Zynga have added features that make their games more fun with more friends playing. While this probably works well for a good amount of users, it has also had the unexpected side effect of forging relationships between people that do not know each other. The prominence of the issue is made exceptionally clear on these games’ walls, which are littered with open requests to “Add Me” as a “friend” on the social network.
This momentum towards adding fake friends is certainly not good for Facebook, and is reminiscent of one of MySpace’s core problems. At this point, any attempt to reverse the trend will result in a group for “People I Don’t Know” within the profile of many users. Moreover, it is unclear if Facebook has a desire to preserve the integrity of friendships in the first place. With social games driving a significant amount of revenue and already being deeply integrated into Facebook’s long-term roadmap, it is reasonable that the social network will remain content with their current standing.
One option is to put pressure on social game makers to eliminate the features that cause these problems, which wouldn’t be completely out of Zuckerberg’s character. Years ago, he removed applications from main profile pages, which destroyed the revenue stream of many app creators. One of those app creators, Slide, shared Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund as an investor. I consider this one of the greatest moves Facebook has ever made, but I’m far from convinced they would give the same treatment to social games. Unlike the early profile page applications, Facebook is profiting off of these games. Asking the game makers to remove features that help the games go viral doesn’t seem to benefit anyone financially.
Did social games kill Facebook’s social graph? I don’t know for sure, but the graph is definitely struggling, and Facebook is definitely struggling to find a solution. Facebook has a place in the future, but it’s possible this hole has created room for a new, more intimate social network to swoop in without Facebook stepping on their toes. What do you think?
I recently Friendtoxed for this very reason.
Great insights into an important problem for our industry: Facebook is a horizontal social graph. The ‘friends and family graph’. Not the only social graph that can exist.
I believe that both Zynga and Facebook tremendously profit from hyperinflating number of users and relationships.
How do we really know total number of users on Facebook? My, my wife and many of our friends have double or triple FB accounts only to gain the most from Zynga’s social games.
The one thing worth noting is that Zynga refuses to limit number of friends in “clan” (MafiaWars/VampireWars). The limits are absurd.
If they were lower and clan size was of less importance, social games would actually help to develop web-friendships. I’d like that.
But with thousands of friends in profile, you are hit with such a noise, that ultimately you are all alone. Sad.
I do think that games have killed the social graph.
I do think that games on Facebook have another side that people do not think about. There are a lot of games that track a lot of your activity on Facebook and then use that to target advertising and the such. This is part of the friendship game that is played on Facebook. The more friends you have the easier it is to track what types of interests you have. I doubt most people think twice about allowing games access to their entire profile.
I also believe that there is a lot of time spent playing these games and no real advantage gained by the players. All the advantage is the game makers. For me personally there needs to be some gain for me as well.
These are just two reasons why I do not play any games on Facebook. I block all games, quizzes, etc. I only add people I actually know as friends and have met, that even goes for extended family. If I have never met that person I do not add them.
It would be interesting to see how many people do not play any sort of games, take quizzes, etc on Facebook. Not sure if there is a way to get that data or if it is even tracked. My personal belief is that less than 40% of people play games on Facebook and that more than 75% of those that do play the games are under 25 and over 55. The group between 25 and 55 will be the minority playing the games.
Completely Agree. This article is so well timed. I was just discussing this last night. I used to be an avid (maybe too avid) user of Facebook, but it’s too ‘noisy’ now. I find myself drawn more to Twitter.
I started playing Facebook games with the game ‘Farm Town’. I finished the game (they had a long lag before they added more levels) and loved it. It had social aspects (hiring people to work on your farm) but they didn’t have to be your neighbor, if you found someone to be pleasant and wanted to forge a friendship, then you might add them.
Then I started playing Zynga games, starting with FarmTown (then on to Treasure Isle and Frontierville). I really enjoyed them at first, but then in order to progress in the game, I had to start adding complete strangers as friends. If that wasn’t bad enough, now they make you beg and beg and beg on the walls ” I need 3 shingles” “I need 2 hammer” over and over. It spams my wall with posts about the game (and if I block the posts from the game, I block the reasonable ones I may need) and I don’t care about a ton of the people on my facebook, because they aren’t actually my friends.
So now I don’t play the games anymore. Which disappoints me, when they first came out, they were enjoyable, but now it’s just out of control. Beyond just not playing the games, I don’t really go to facebook anymore, and I I do, I usually check my wall feed through Tweet Deck and don’t even both going to the homepage.
Oh, and I forgot to add the thing that really pushed me over the edge is how now I’d get requests on my wall about the game, not even important ones. They would just be more of the begging we have to do to play, but now it’s not just in my feed, it’s spamming my wall and I have to go through and delete them as they come, so my wall is still a place for ‘socialization’ instead of desperate gaming.