management

A couple of months ago I ran across an article (among many) that talked about the explosive growth of gaming on Facebook. After reading the piece I posted an idle question on Twitter, wondering if Facebook would ever been known as a game site first and a social-networking site second.

Obviously Facebook’s appeal transcends gaming. But another article over the weekend also makes it clear that the trend toward Facebook as a game-centric web space continues:

Market research group Lightspeed Research says 53 percent of Facebook’s members aged 18 and over have played a social game, and that 19 percent of those users consider themselves addicted to the games.

It’s also clear that Facebook did not see this coming. Most of Facebook’s games were third-party products, which, in many cases, were being used to rip-off Facebook’s own customers. (Facebook only stepped in to police the abuses when it noticed the amount of revenue being generated, and wanted a cut for itself.)

Beyond the historical perspective, what’s interesting to me about the continued explosive growth of gaming on Facebook is that it may signal weakness in the site’s social-networking premise. (Obviously the number of gamers and frequency of play only benefits Facebook. I’m not arguing that this is a problem relative to Facebook’s ongoing attempts to generate revenue from page clicks or by harvesting user data, etc.)

The premise of Facebook is that it allows you to build and manage your social relationships. But there are two potential problems with this premise. First, although some people treat Facebook as a competition, always looking to generate more ‘friends’, most people have a limited network they want to build and maintain. Once that’s accomplished, there’s not much more networking to do, which for many people is the fun part. Second, even a minimal network can require a great deal of maintenance, including photo and conversation management. While such things might be fun at first, keeping everything up to date on Facebook requires the same numbing process that goes into updating a physical photo album or contact list.

In this context, the explosion of interest in gaming on Facebook may be an indicator that social networking is losing steam on that site. Perhaps users are tired of self-directed building and management, and want a more catered experience. Maybe they’re bored with all of their ‘friends’. Maybe they simply have nothing else to do on the site than feed and maintain their presence, which is the internet equivalent of watering and weeding a garden. [ Read more ]

Reality Refresh
Having looked closely at the publishing industry for the past few months, and having worked in both the software industry and the film industry at various times over the past two decades, I’ve come to a few conclusions about digital rights management (DRM). The most important is that there is no clear-cut solution to the question of piracy, and anybody who tells you they’ve got it all figured out is working their own angle. And that includes Cory Doctorow and me.

Like the subject of abortion in the political arena, DRM is injected into every conversation about content ownership and distribution whether it’s directly relevant or not. If you don’t say the right things to the right people about DRM you risk associations and opportunities that might be of value, not because you’re wrong on the merits, but because you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy by implying that they are not pure evil. At the same time, those people who don’t buy into a black-and-white view of DRM will think you an idiot for not using the impassioned nuts on both sides to your own advantage.

The correct answer to questions about DRM in the current context is not to be suckered into a debate about technological solutions or the prosecution of college students, but to educate and evangelize about the problems that drive the implementation of DRM technology in the first place. Although most end users who pirate content do so as individuals, the collective effect of these individual decisions hurts copyright holders and content creators in very real ways. Yes, some piracy may be sticking it to The Man, but it’s also killing artists that people apparently want to read, listen to and watch. [ Read more ]