If you’ve ever played a Facebook game, dreamed of making one, or just wanted to name one, you have got to try the “Facebook Game Idea Generator”. It’s a tongue-in-cheek application that presents you with a series of Facebook game ideas one after another, probably by randomizing the most popular elements of existing social games. It’s more of a name generator than anything else, but it’s worth a laugh.
Certainly the fact that this game only gives you the ‘name’ of the random game hits home the fact that the social game universe is dominated by clones of other games. On Facebook, I did not expect to be part of such a high number of “wars” or member of so many “villes”, but those are the games that dominate. I’ve been trying to use this little application to come up with the next Facebook hit, and here are some of my results.
* Pirate Fighter
* Mobster Rivals
* Castle World Tour
* Mafia Warrior
* Yo Extreme
* Hero Society
* Island Rivals
* Happy Rivals
My personal favourites are Yo Extreme and Happy Rivals. I’m sure these will be in the top ten soon. Check out the image below and click here to play the game. I must note that it’s ironic that THIS application isn’t even on Facebook. Also, check out [...]

A new Facebook group set up by Greenpeace is calling for Facebook to use 100 percent renewable energy within their data centers. This is a reinvigorated movement from the initial backlash against Facebook’s environmental policies at the beginning of February. The latest group has over 150,000 members, far more than any previous group that has attempted to get Facebook to change their environmental policies.
Is Facebook Hiding Something?
The Greenpeace group calls Facebook’s use of coal powered plants, Facebook’s “dirty little secret” but honestly, there’s nothing secretive about it. As a Facebook spokesperson explained back in early February:
…Our new data center will be receiving our power through PacifiCorp, which like most utilities has a diverse generation portfolio including hyrdo, geothermal, wind and coal… When it comes online in early 2011, the new Facebook data center will also be one of the most energy efficient in the world, featuring an innovative cooling system created for the unique climate characteristics in Prineville, Oregon.”
In other words, it’s up to PacifiCorp as to what energy resources are used. Unfortunately it’s extremely easy to criticize a company for a poor energy policy because the majority of this country is still run on coal. Is it possible for Facebook to run off completely renewable resources? Possibly, but it doesn’t make financial sense right now.
Businesses As Leaders
To suggest that Facebook didn’t consider energy efficiency when planning their data center would be pretty ridiculous. The reality is that there isn’t enough pressure from consumers for businesses to act in [...]

Monetization service providers that first got traction on Facebook are continuing to diversify, with the latest example being offer company Super Rewards. It has just launched a new version of its offer wall, intended for Flash game developers who distribute their creations across the web. The service is basically the offer wall that Super Rewards already provides, but available for developers to embed within their Flash game interfaces. Advertising offers are performance ads, drawn from various ad networks and advertisers, and users can participate in the ads in exchange for virtual currency in games.
Super Rewards is letting people who play Flash games that use virtual currency take these offers and earn the currency without having to leave the game page. In this example, you can see how it works: Click on “get more coins” and you’ll see the offer window appear overlaying the game. Then you take the offers, get the currency, and buy virtual goods within the game.

While the company offered a way to add offer walls via an XML integration, the new service allows developers to do so in what it says takes less than an hour. Developers can check out the implementation information here. Other companies that provide in-Flash payment services include Jambool and its Social Gold product. We should note that social games on Facebook that use Flash normally include offer walls on separate pages within applications.
Super Rewards, a part of online advertising company Adknowledge, hasn’t announced any developer partners yet. But the service is live, [...]

Eager to start picking their brackets, Facebook users have begun flocking to the leading bracket applications by the thousands since the beginning of the month. The three most popular applications are developed by Citizen Sports, Watercooler, and CBSSports.com each have distinct business objectives from one another. The applications have driven over 500,000 visitors so far this month.
While the traffic to all the applications have most likely come from cross-promotion and Facebook advertising, March Madness is always an extremely active event on the Facebook Platform. It’s the result of a long history with Facebook, which began with the company developing their own internal application which was later branded by CBS Sports.
March Madness was the center of controversy on Facebook in 2008 as CBSSports was granted access to premium promotion spots in addition to being granted 100 invites per user per day, far more than any other application. Last year there was far less drama surrounding the applications, although they were extremely popular as usual.
In late February, users began flocking to March Madness applications, at which point Watercooler had already attracted over 111,000 users to their application. This year is comparable to last year. Right now Citizen Sports has almost 400,000 users, while Watercooler has around 100,000 users via their application, and CBS Sports has around 50,000 users. Of all the applications, Citizen Sports has no shame when it comes to promotional partners.
Both Miller Lite and Sports Illustrated have partnered with the company for this year’s brackets. Miller Lite also has a [...]