HitOrNot, a new Facebook game, is where the users play the role of an up and coming music mogul. Their goals are to pick hot songs and earn money based on their taste, use that money to highlight songs of their own choice, and then earn money based on people enjoying your music. One of the best elements of the game is the use of 30 second clips of real music, most definitely adding to the app’s appeal.
The game focuses on the fact that “your ability to pick hits will be rewarded” and gamers vie to gain ranks and become known as a great music Executive. The ultimate goal of the game is to become a “Global Dominator”, and then be part of the chosen few to join the Secret Circle, where you’d purportedly have a big effect on the way the game is played. Very cool.
Overall, the ranking of the song is pretty basic. You listen to 30 seconds of a song (sometimes they have the full song), and then you rank a song. Your goal is not to put in your personal reaction, but rather to guess how popular the song is with other tastemakers in the game. The closer you are to the average, the better your Hit Spotter score.
Eventually, with enough points and money, players are able to buy artists and songs, and then gain more points based on their success. If people enjoy your artist and turn them into a “hit”, you make money as [...]

In its latest move to expand on Facebook, Playdom has bought social game developer Offbeat Creations. Playdom raised $43 million last fall — it said it would be buying companies, at the time, and it quickly did with its purchases of Green Patch and Trippert Labs.
We’ve been expecting many acquisitions of this sort to happen in 2010. Smaller developers are facing a host of new competition, from big rivals like Playdom that have established traffic, experience, operations and revenue streams, and from traditional gaming companies. Facebook’s changes to its interface and platform policies — like the recent removal of notifications — means that most developers need to come up with new strategies, which is something smaller shops have fewer resources to do.
Offbeat Creations has 8 applications on Facebook, with the largest being dice game Super Farkle. Between its apps, the developer has nearly 1.5 million monthly active users and more than 200,000 daily active users, according to AppData.
The Bellevue, Wash. company, founded by Chia Chin Lee, Robert Reichner and Tom Fakes and its team of 12 will join Playdom’s 15-person Seattle office, the companies say. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This blog is taken from insidesocialgames.com By Eric Eldon

Facebook Pages actually can boost sales, a recent study Rice University in Houston, Texas, recently concluded. Fans of these Pages are, overall, more loyal to a business, spend more and are likelier to spread the word. The study on the Houston café chain Dessert Gallery was done by their consultant Emily Durham, founder of Houston-based consultancy Restaurant Connections, and Utpal Dholakia, an associate professor at Rice who studies online marketing.
“In a nut shell: Facebook fans visit more, they spend more during their visit, they have a higher attachment to that brand,” Dholakia tells us.

Dessert Gallery is a Houston-based café chain with two locations, that’s been around since 1995; the company’s Facebook Page went up in June of last year and currently counts 654 fans. Dholakia points out that, while there has been a lot of anecdotal evidence as to Facebook’s effects on revenue streams, this study had an element of control, as it looked at Dessert Gallery’s customer feedback before — and then after — the Facebook Page was used as part of the café’s marketing.
Dholakia and Durham surveyed Dessert Gallery’s customers via its email list of about 13,000 in June 2009 before the Facebook Page was up and running, and then surveyed the same list in October, after it had grown to about 14,000. The survey in October was also advertised on Facebook. The initial evaluation queried basic store evaluations and shopping behaviors and received 689 responses; three months later, the second evaluation asked similar questions, but also about [...]

A Wall Street Journal article from yesterday has generated some buzz as it includes a number of interesting details about Facebook’s revenue among other things. The most interesting piece of information was that Facebook’s revenue could be between $1.2 and $2 billion this year. The article primarily centered around Mark Zuckerberg’s continued desire to delay any public offering.
One interesting strategy that companies like Zynga have decided to follow, is the issuance of restricted-stock units (RSUs) which enable the company to stay under the 500 shareholder threshold for private companies. While last year’s revenue have become part of a post-speculation game, estimates range from $650 to $750 million for the year.
Next year, those numbers could potentially double, along with the site’s user base which is racing toward 1 billion users. While this year or next, Facebook could potentially reach Google-size, the company tries to avoid any comparison. Instead, Facebook is focusing on new products, including location tracking, a feature that the article suggested was currently being tested internally.
Also of interest is that Mark Zuckerberg “readily abandons concepts a year or more in the making.” So perhaps that’s what happened to the Facebook Video Chat product we wrote about last year! Ultimately, a number of interesting tidbits were scattered throughout the story, however it was more about exploring Mark Zuckerberg’s ability to serve as an executive.
According to the WSJ, Zuckerberg likes to micromanage, focuses on long-term goals, quotes popular movies to motivate employees, and has dropped the post-meeting domination fist pump.
This [...]

HitOrNot, a new Facebook game, is where the users play the role of an up and coming music mogul. Their goals are to pick hot songs and earn money based on their taste, use that money to highlight songs of their own choice, and then earn money based on people enjoying your music. One of the best elements of the game is the use of 30 second clips of real music, most definitely adding to the app’s appeal.
The game focuses on the fact that “your ability to pick hits will be rewarded” and gamers vie to gain ranks and become known as a great music Executive. The ultimate goal of the game is to become a “Global Dominator”, and then be part of the chosen few to join the Secret Circle, where you’d purportedly have a big effect on the way the game is played. Very cool.
Overall, the ranking of the song is pretty basic. You listen to 30 seconds of a song (sometimes they have the full song), and then you rank a song. Your goal is not to put in your personal reaction, but rather to guess how popular the song is with other tastemakers in the game. The closer you are to the average, the better your Hit Spotter score.
Eventually, with enough points and money, players are able to buy artists and songs, and then gain more points based on their success. If people enjoy your artist and turn them into a “hit”, you make money as [...]