Mobile is getting more social. Let’s take a look how that’s playing out on Facebook, Twitter, and game app platforms.

Facebook

Facebook, which took over the web with single sign-on, is now trying to conquer mobile. Facebook announced its single sign-on for mobile on Nov. 3, 2010. Single sign-on (SSO) allows users to sign on to third-party apps and services using their Facebook credentials. This reduces the amount of time required by a user to register on mobile devices; this results in higher conversion rates with an abundance of additional user information. “It takes you quickly from the stuff you have to do, to the stuff you want to do,” says Eric Tseng, VP of mobile at Facebook. “Single sign-on can be enabled with just a few lines of code,” he adds. (Here’s a Facebook resource for developers.)

Features include allowing the developer access to a list of a user’s friends, and providing users with an easy way to post on their wall to share with friends. In mobile, Facebook, owns and monitors a user’s friends list, similar to the web. Developers can access the list via Facebook once a user signs in via their app. With single sign-on, you can also ask for permission to send an email. This is a great way for marketers to get email access to their users connecting on mobile devices.

Unlike the deep native iOS Twitter integration recently announced (see below), Apple pulled plans for native Facebook integration late last year citing Facebook’s “onerous” terms. Specifically, Apple was planning to integrate Facebook in Ping, Apple’s new music-focused social networking service. Ping launched in September without Facebook making it more difficult to connect with friends and share music preferences. Only time will tell if Apple and Facebook will develop a deeper partnership.

Flixster is an example of a successful mobile app using Facebook SSO. Flixster’s social element encourages the sharing of reviews and movie “Wants to See” list with friends. This is a popular iOS app, and oddly enough, I only had one person on my Facebook friends’ list that used their servie, and that was my brother, Aaron Weber, the founder of Inveni, a site similar to Flixster.

Groupon was one of the first apps to integrate Facebook’s SSO. Groupon owes much of its tremendous growth to marketing through low-cost Facebook ads when the inventory was cheap, as Facebook was an ideal marketing vehicle to reach 18-to-34 year-old women with college degrees. Now Groupon is making it easy for users to take advantage of its offers through Facebook’s single sign-on and using the “Share This Deal” and “Post to Your Wall” function to capitalize further on social for continued hyper growth

Companies such as Zynga and Popcap Games, which already have valuable applications for their users on the web version of Facebook, will find single sign-on to be very effective in mobile too. For example, in a recent post, “How Popcap Games Cracked the Code for Cross-Platform Synchronization with Bejeweled Blitz,” I walk through how PopCap Games leveraged SSO in Bejeweled Blitz to make it easy for game players to compete with friends wherever they were, using whatever device they choose. In fact, PopCap has done so well, it is rumored to be in the final stages of selling for $1 billion at the time I am writing this post.

Twitter

Could Twitter be an alternative sign-on network to Facebook? Apple thinks so. At the recent WWDC event in San Francisco, Apple announced native Twitter integration via iOS 5; it’s due out later this fall. This will allow users to sign in to their Twitter account once in their device settings and then tweet with a single tap from Twitter-enabled apps, including Apple’s camera, photos, Safari, contacts, YouTube, and maps. Developers can easily take advantage of the single sign-on capability, letting users tweet directly from their apps too.

Game App Platforms

Game app developers are very innovative. Keep an eye on top game platform providers, even if you are in another category, to stay ahead of the curve.

Most experts in mobile social gaming are aware of DeNA’s pending U.S. launch of Mobage, Gree’s recent acquisition of OpenFeint, and RIM’s recent acquisition of Scoreloop. The major players are putting up significant cash for a lot of anonymous social connections that don’t seem that valuable to me. These emerging game platforms are likely to have more traction on Android than on iOS as Android allows for the creation of competing payment systems and marketplaces (i.e., app stores).

Even scrappy startups are getting into the mix. Since many of the mobile-only social networks have only a small fraction of your friends signed on, PlacePlay uses location to add new friends for local tournaments. Although this is a game example, it could apply to various other app models. When a new app is launched and doesn’t have millions of active users, connecting people through geography can drive up user engagement. PlacePlay also allows advertisers to target users in places relevant to their businesses and increases payouts to developers.

This is just the beginning of an ever-evolving mobile app industry. Keep an eye on Facebook’s Project Spartan, which will enable HTML5 social apps, especially games, to use Facebook Credits as a payment mechanism, cutting out Apple. A major strength of the App Store is its easy payment system. With Project Spartan, Facebook plans to have Credits built in to allow developers to sell apps and offer in-app purchases. TechCrunch reports that there are currently 80 outside developers working with Facebook on the platform, including Zynga and The Huffington Post.

Key Mobile Social Takeaways

Easily accessing a user’s list of friends in mobile is big. For digital marketers, the good news is that most of these new social options in mobile can be implemented in ways that are similar to their social web counterparts.

Also, pay extra attention to your user interface design such as those cited by Flixster, Groupon, and PopCap Games. Having a great user interface is key to developing valuable social experiences in mobile.

Let me know if you know of any other companies that are making mobile more social.

Everyone will be talking about Zynga’s IPO by the end of 2011, but they should be talking about who is winning in mobile as mobile social gaming will be bigger than web social gaming in five years. 2011 will be the year mobile apps start becoming more social, as a predicted in my 2011 new year’s post.

With their Newtoys acquisition, Zynga now owns the unbelievably popular Words with Friends. Marc Pincus’ first game on Facebook, Zynga Poker, has turned into a heavy hitter in mobile too. Words with Friends and Zynga Poker respectively rank as 13 and 2 in the top U.S. grossing charts for iOS. DeNA/ngmoco have only one title in the top 50 and that’s the Deluxe version of their hit We Rule coming in at number 36 in the top U.S. grossing charts on iOS.

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2)      Hybrid Apps Featuring Native Clients with Web Functionality will Dominate Mobile- With all the hype about HTML5 apps stealing the limelight away from existing native mobile apps, 2011 will see a new movement prevail. In mobile, the majority of top apps will not move completely to the cloud as so many have prognosticated but instead will evolve into hybrid applications where native client software on the device will be coupled with web functionality. That’s right, I said it all you cloud fan boys!

3)      Freemium Games Will Take Over the App Store- By the end of October 2010, 34 of the top 100 apps were free according to Gigaom. By the end of 2011, over 65 of the top 100 grossing apps in the iPhone App Store will rely on the freemium model. But it won’t be all peaches and crème for app developers trying to get in on the iOS freemium gold rush. The first half of 2011 will see freemium games being launched at a break neck pace. Other large studios will follow Sega’s Kingdom Conquest, Capcom’s Smurf’s Village and Glu’s Gun Brothers 2011’s launches with multiple freemium game launches of their own. This increased competition will cause the average cost of development for successful freemium games to go up considerably, as well as the cost for marketing, and result in only particularly innovative indie developers being able to compete. Distribution will be hard for freemium apps given the added competition, but even harder for paid apps given the abundance of quality freemium games.

4)      Android App Developers Will Actually Start Making Money- It won’t happen until the second half of this year, but Android app developers will finally start making money. Google and its Android partners will finally make their billing process more frictionless, and the result will be app developers will finally start making money for the Android efforts. Unlike on the iOS, Android billing will first start to get to scale with freemium games and not with paid apps. Paid apps will continue to falter all year on Android.

5)      Tablets will Garner Wide Spread Adoption in Developed Countries- The iPad will continue to sell like gangbusters, with a huge bump when the iPad 2 comes out. Not to be outdone, Android tablets will start catching up in monthly sales volumes of the iPad by the end of 2011.

6)      Apps for TV’s will Not Take Wide Spread Form- The Apple TV and Google TV will not get to any kind of measurable market share during 2011, and as such, app developers will take a wait and see approach. As we end 2011, it will become increasingly clear how apps will evolve in the living room.

Bonus Prediction: Mobile Apps, Especially Games, Will Get More Social- Fueled by DeNA’s Mobigae launch and Facebook’s single sign on, mobile apps, especially games, will become much more social in 2011.

Recharge is planning to invest a minimum of $1 million for outside studios to make social games for the iOS. To sweeten the pot, Recharge only wants a share of iOS profits in return — in other words, it won’t ask for an ownership stake in the company or launches on other platforms, like Android.

“Because you can acquire consumers relatively cheaply, mobile is like the early days of Facebook gaming,” says W3i cofounder Robert Weber. “We think it’s a great opportunity for developers on Facebook, especially if they’re feeling squeezed out.””

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PopCap Games cracked the cross platform code with Bejeweled Blitz for Facebook and iOS.  Bejeweled Blitz is the #10 most popular Facebook application and the #14 paid iPhone app in the App Store at a $2.99 pricepoint, #14 in top grossing.  This synchronization enabled Bejeweled Blitz to get a mass user base—last count is 12,506,757 users as of 9/12/2010 (source, www.appdata.com) as the game allows users to connect to Facebook and compete with friends whether they are on their PC or iPhone. 

 Source:  Topappcharts.com

In the example below, Colleen is playing in a weekly Bejeweled Blitz tournament on her PC through Facebook, while Jessica is playing in the same tournament on her iPhone —now that’s an integrated platform.  Colleen and Jessica had never played the same game together, because Colleen doesn’t have an iOS device. Now they are regularly competing for the highest Bejeweled Blitz score.

Another indication that apps are moving toward cross platform synchronization is Google’s recent acquisition of Social Deck, a platform which provides social synchronization for app developers across Blackberry, iPhone and Facebook .  Google is reportedly working on a social platform to rival Facebook.

OpenFeint is also working on a multi-player, cross-platform solution for Android and iOS called OpenFeint PlayTime.  Reportedly OpenFeint PlayTime also gives the user matchmaking, game servers and real-time voice chat. “Traditionally, multiplayer technology has been accessible only to top-tier developers. It’s just too complicated and time-consuming.” states Aurora Feint CEO Jason Citron.

Strong cross platform synchronization is going to become a defining requirement for games to achieve top prominence as social experiences will require that users can play all of their friends. I believe we’ll see Apple incorporate tools in Game Center to make cross platform experiences easier through tighter integration with Facebook within the next year.

Kudos to PopCap Games for their work on Bejeweled Blitz!

Are you thinking about how you can annoy people less and be more effective with your advertising? If not, start paying attention, because your competition is.

Digital marketers are shifting their advertising strategies on how they reach people in social apps. The old, impression-based advertising model in social apps doesn’t work because it annoys people. Ever wonder why the cost of Facebook display ads is so low? People do not want to be interrupted by display ads when they are trying to play games with their friends. The same goes for display ads located within social apps in mobile. The mobile ad networks and publishers provide good air cover to help prop up their rates, but it is commonly accepted by most insiders that the majority of mobile ad impressions are going unsold. Marketers are finding that the right advertising strategy for social apps is to stop annoying people and to start focusing on ways to integrate with actual social activity.

Here are four examples of brands connecting with people through their true social activities:

Activity-Based Advertising on iPhone AppsBravo badges in Foursquare: In January, Bravo created badges that Foursquare users could earn by checking into locations linked to shows like “Top Chef” and “The Millionaire Matchmaker.” The Foursquare app saw a 31 percent increase in downloads those two weeks.

Powermat on MyTown: Powermat, a company specializing in wireless charging stations, worked with Appssavvy to advertise in Booyah’s MyTown. The Powermat campaign included a first-of-its-kind sweepstakes promotion on MyTown to enter to win Powermat’s Wireless Charging System for iPhone by physically interacting with Powermat products in-store. Powermat saw an increase in recall of 38.2 percentage points to 43.3 percent.

Activity-Based Advertising on Facebook Applications

Cascadian Farm virtual good on FarmVille: Zynga, developer of the famous Farmville app on Facebook, launched a number of activity-based campaigns. Recently, over 310 million Cascadian Farm organic blueberries were planted by FarmVille players.

MTV interview on Social Interview: Appssavvy also created a campaign for MTV that ran on Social Interview. A Facebook application, Social Interview has an audience of more than 11 million monthly active users and was used to promote MTV’s new original comedy, “The Hard Times of RJ Berger.” More than two-thirds of Social Interview users who saw the “Hard Times” branded interview clicked to start the application – nearly seven times the average engagement rate.

As Damon Burrell, VP, marketing, at MTV Networks puts it, “Currently there is a fundamental shift going on in digital marketing, which we are embracing, especially as it relates to social media. The Hard Times of RJ Berger on Social Interview exemplifies this shift, as true engagement isn’t about users clicking on a banner and coming to our site, but rather integrating them into the experience and providing something of value.”

The trend toward activity-based advertising in social apps is not only a win for marketers, but it helps the publisher maintain a high level of engagement with its audience. As most social app developers will tell you, their most important measure of success is how large and how active their audience is in engaging with their social app. That’s why application metrics sites like AppData for Facebook focus on the amount of active users of a unit of time, and not just the number of installs of a particular app.

When developing your advertising strategies for social apps, be sure to connect with people while the social activity is taking place in the app.

I read Twitter Means Business by Julio Ojeda-Zapata on vacation in Mexico. Julio is a nationally recognized tech journalist (for example, see his post about his recent appearance on TWiT) who covers tech news for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

A quick tangent on my Mexico trip before I continue…

I knew Nokia was #1 in global market share for mobile phones, but I haven’t traveled outside of the U.S. much over the past year so this hadn’t really sunk in. I was amazed at how many low-end Nokia feature phones there were in Mexico. For example, I sat on a ferry ride next to a young guy who worked for mobile game company Gtech.  In my extremely choppy Spanish and his choppy English, we discussed the difference in iOS versus Android, and games built for feature phones.  Pretty funny discussion on who’s the target market for various phones.

I was late to adopt Twitter… Why?

I was down on social media after watching Facebook transition from its initial early adopters to its current position of mass consumer penetration. Through the transition to the mainstream, Facebook ended up becoming a pretty worthless professional tool for me. I’ve always been a LinkedIn fan, but I find LinkedIn tends to be where relations go to die versus to develop.

What caused me to finally pay attention to Twitter?

I was urged by friend and fellow Minnesota tech entrepreneur, Philip Hotchkiss, to adopt Twitter for professional purposes about a year ago.

How did I get started?

I started following individuals I came across during my general professional life.

Eventually, the number of relationships I followed became hard to manage so I started building Twitter lists on key conversations I like to participate in, such as app marketers, app developers, tech media, and Minnesota tech.

What did I miss during the Twitter early days?

By being a late adopter to Twitter, I missed out on some of the early business success stories. Julio’s book did a great job of retelling these early stories.  Here are a few excerpts that specifically apply to app developers:

Evernote’s stellar customer service, for Windows apps and other OS apps, fix problems before most users even notice them. “Twitter has proven invaluable for identifying problems with its software, if a bug crops up, Evernote will hear about it, almost instantly,” comments Andrew Sinkov, Evernote Marketing Director (page 58). Evernote built a strong following due to its popularity with the web-tech set.  Tweets help identify bugs, as well as capture usage ideas, as a vehicle for new product/feature communication, and a polling medium to get user feedback.

Promoting the MyLite iPhone App- Graeme Thickens and DoApp: “He (Graeme Thickens) used his @DoApp identity as a sort of news feed to keep followers apprised of developments in iPhone application development, which was a superhot subject in the consumer-technology universe” (page 57).  Thickins searched for mentions of DoApp on Twitter and asked for permission to post some of the more creative tweets.  Users were finding all kinds of interesting uses for the myLite program, which is a combination strobe, emergency flasher, and rock-concert lighter.  Nearly two dozen uses were identified including: a radiologist setting it to red for use in the x-ray room; and a WVA medic using the emergency flasher at night festival “so other members of rescue and fire could find me in a dark sea of people.”

Amy Worley, Director of Digital Marketing, H&R Block, used Twitter to increase awareness of their desktop software (page 41). Worley was on a crusade to publicize the company’s digital offerings, including its TaxCut options, for doing taxes online. She used Twitter to broadcast tax tips like tax deductions commonly missed or W-4 tips.  She also used Twitter to answer tax questions, creating a two-way conversation with users.   Twitter evolved to become an integral part of their marketing efforts showing that H&R Block is a true advocate for the taxpayer.

My own personal Twitter business success story

While on vacation in Mexico, I joined my fellow colleagues at W3i in launching Apperang, a service which pays consumers to try iPhone and iPad apps.

A couple of weeks prior to the launch, I used Twitter to reach two app developers, which resulted in their participation in the public launch of our iOS app promotion service before we were even live. I found that many app developers are hard to reach, and Twitter is a very useful tool for engaging in conversations with them.

Perhaps even more telling of the business value in using Twitter, as a part of our launch, was how an unsolicited tweet was able to connect me to a writer at TechCrunch named, Gagan Biyani, which ultimately landed us a story in Mobile Crunch. This was no small feat for a company headquartered in central Minnesota, far from Sillicon Valley. Later on, several other tech blogs followed on the TechCrunch coverage and they wrote their own stories. The post Biyani wrote ended up being among the most popular in Mobile Crunch for the entire week – during a week that was competing for coverage against the iPhone 4 launch. Not only was it good industry buzz that resulted in several leads from additional new app developers who wanted to participate in our app promotion service; but it helped provide a big organic boost in early adopters on the consumer side of our service as well, which has provided great feedback while we are in our public beta phase.

I would highly recommend Julio’s book for anyone involved with using Twitter for business purposes.  I am also looking forward to reading Julio’s new book when it is published on how businesses are using the iPad.

If you are an app developer interested in tips around the business of apps, I would recommend following @W3i, or if you are interested in following me personally, @robertjweber.  Please comment if you have any interesting stories on how you used Twitter to grow your app business.

Most of the pay per download networks utilize some method of cross promotion to drive additional installs while users are installing or interacting with another app.

So, how do these pay per download programs, like W3i’s Application Network for iOS apps, Windows apps and browser add-ons, compare in cost to other channels for app distribution such as search, display, affiliate, and OEM?

To answer this question, I had W3i’s Media Buyers examine past campaign performance across these difference channels and tallied up our effective cost per download by channel. The following bar graph is based upon the actual campaign performance which was achieved.

As you can see from W3i’s campaign results, pay per download programs can create a meaningful distribution channel while lowering an app developers costs by often as much as one third the cost of other alternatives!

Many app developers have tried search and affiliate programs to promote their app because they are more widely recognized tactics, but have failed to launch and optimize their apps for low cost pay per download networks.

Make sure you ask your pay per download program how they adhere to industry best practices, and what care they take in establishing a valued user experience. The engine that powers W3i’s Application Network, InstallIQ, has received the Truste Trusted Download certification and is white listed by Truste.

Whether you have an iPhone app, a Facebook game, a Windows application, or a browser toolbar, contact W3i to learn how you can launch and optimize your app using W3i’s pay per download program. 

This article was written for app developers seeking downloads, however, if you have a website and would like to promote W3i’s applications, go to W3i’s affiliate sign-up form.

The team that manages Freeze.com recently launched Tweativity; a free Twitter backgrounds desktop app which leverages Twitter’s API’s to encourage sharing.

As you can see from the following screen shot, one of the marketing goals of this desktop app is to leverage Twitter’s messaging API to go viral:

I installed Tweativity and would highly recommend it. Give this free Twitter backgrounds app

I’ll report back on how it is performing and lessons learned over the coming weeks.

Well, one casual PC gaming company is bucking that trend, and making a big splash in the world of Facebook games. 

iWin’s Family Feud game for Facebook was reported to be one of the fastest growing Facebook games recently with an astounding 75.76% increase in users week-over-week according to Inside Social Games.

I spoke with iWin’s founder CJ Wolf this week to congratulate him on his success. Based on our conversation, I expect to see many more Facebook game successes in their future. Keep up the good work iWin.