Is Social Gaming Crossing the Line?

Social gaming has become extremely popular for both gamers and the gaming companies. We all know about Second Life and World of Warcraft, but the Japanese company, DeNA is becoming extremely popular. They have announced their total revenue for 2009 was a whopping $517 million: up an exorbitant amount from the $205 million they made in 2008.

DeNA is extremely interactive, similar to the interaction in Second Life. Games on social networking sites offer a different type of interaction. You can play a game with your friends while privately chatting with them, or others on the side. Some bloggers have considered this a huge difference though, and games on sites like Facebook and Twitter should not be considered social gaming, but instead viral gaming.

Farmville is an extremely popular game. Whether you want to call it a social game, or a virtual game, it is advertised on many social networking sites, including Facebook and attracts people of all ages. The interaction with a user's own farm and their friends' farms is definitely a huge draw and Farmville has had a huge success because of this. This game allows users to farm on their own virtual farm, but also visit their friends, help their farm, and give and receive gifts. Users can even leave messages on their friends farms. While some sites believe these games are scams, they are advertised perfectly and give users what the want: INTERACTION.

There are over 400 million users on Facebook, which makes it a popular place to promote social gaming. Myspace used to be as popular as Facebook is now, which is why they had different applications on their site. If they were still popular now, the games on their site would be pulling in as much money as the Facebook apps. Satya Murphy put together a fantastic slideshow going into detail of the future of the mix between social networking and social gaming. It is definitely going to become a lot easier for people to play their favorite games, and I for one cannot wait!!

How Can You Measure ROI?

ROI is something that everyone is trying to measure. It is difficult to measure ROI when it comes to social media. Everyone is blogging about the best way to measure ROI. On the web, you cannot just look at the number of hits you have received, but also the bounce rate and the average amount of time spent on the page. It is also beneficial to measure the number of times your site is linked to another site. These collectively, all help understand ROI.

Do We Use Web SITES, or Web SERVICES?

Read Write Web is a great website about the up and coming changes to the internet. One major change is that websites are becoming services now. Most sites sell a product, which is extremely convenient. This makes them services. These services need a way to monitor their popularity. Many websites offer ways to monitor this. In fact, the article 15 Ways for Monitoring a Website's Popularity lists links and diagrams of how each site does this.

Web Services are great resources in today's society. People today are either extremely lazy, or busy: complete extremes. Web Services need to monitor their popularity, so they can gauge how to promote their products.

Got Something to Say?? TWEET About It!!

Marshall Kirkpatrick blogged about Monica Rankin's Youtube video which was marked as one of the top bookmarks on a day, but did not have that many hits. He then used this as motivation to analyze how her video ended up on that list. After some analyzing, Kirkpatrick noticed that Twitter was her the key to Rankin's success.

Twitter is a great resource to use to promote anything, especially if you know the tricks to using it. One great trick is to use a link shortener, such as snipr, which shortens a link so it can fit in the highly restricted 160 character limit Twitter has. Also, retweets, and using hashsigns really help for interested followers to check out everything you post. Everybody is on Twitter today. It is a great marketing resource, just ask Jeremy, the creator of his free e-book: Dandelion Marketing.

Get Out of Your Home and NETWORK (or Stay In and Use Technology)

Guest columnist for the Star Ledger, Lee Miller informs readers of the new ways to make future employment connections. Linked-in and Facebook are great ways to make connections and reinforce previous relationships. Another great networking site is coworkers.com which allows you to rate your coworkers' performance, analyze your ratings and improve your skills. This is a great site for people who are already in the business world.

Facebook and Twitter are great networking tools for people of all ages. It is suggested that people make two facebooks: one for personal relations and one for work relations. This way, future employers won't see those pics from your birthday in Vegas. For Twitter, it is recommended by author, Susan Britton Whitcomb, that you choose your identity wisely, shoot for a 75% to 25% professional tweet rate, be visible, and be worthy of a following.

We network everyday, yet it seems to be a difficult task. When looking for your next job just remember, Sit back, Relax, and Tweet!

Your Blog is a Reflection of You

Many organizations are looking at social networks before hiring new employees. Adam Darowski alerts his blog readers that your blog is a great way to network. It allows for future employees to expand on the type of personality they have and show how they are a great fit for a certain company. It is a great help to both the employers and those searching for a job to find the right fit. Joshua Porter agrees with Darowski. His blog breaks down Darowski's idea in a simpler way.
Porter breaks up each idea into bullet points. He then goes into detail for each point. This is extremely helpful to see how to build your online resume.

It makes sense that your blog reflects you, and how you have changed since the start of your blog; however, that means there is a lot of pressure to perfect everything you post. It is weird to think that what I am writing right now could someday be looked at by a future employer at my dream job.

It almost isn't fair to place this much weight on a blog because it hurts people who would rather solve math problems than write frequently about anything they can. Resumes and cover letters are stressful enough without worrying about our personal lives being judged.

T.R.U.S.T

Building trust with a virtual team is important, but can be challenging. Jaclyn Kostner thought of 6 great ways to help build trust: Availability, Competence, Consistency, Fairness, Openness, and Promise Fulfillment. She goes into detail about how each can be fulfilled. The most important is definitely openness. Just because you don't meet with a co-worker face to face doesn't give you a reason to hide what you are thinking. Openness is the key to every success. It can most definitely be challenging learning to share with someone you may have never seen, but sharing your feelings, ideas, and thoughts shows others that you trust them.

Remember when your mom told you 'honesty is the best policy'? Well, that is true in the business world. Honesty, especially when working on a business project, will help the project succeed because all the participants trust that they have all worked as hard as they can to create the best product they can.