Facebook Adds Game Stories to the News Feed, Privacy Settings to Limit Them
August 12th, 2011
Facebook yesterday announced several changes to how games work on the Platform, including that stories about game may be published to the news feeds of a user’s friends, including non-gamers, when the play a game for more than 15 minutes or complete an in-game objective. Depending on their prevalence in the news feed, game usage and achievement stories could help developers gain new users for free, but could also clutter the news feeds of people who don’t care about games.
2011年8月12日
Facebookは昨日、プラットフォーム上でのゲームの動作をいくつか変更したと発表した。変更の中には、あるユーザーがゲームを15分以上プレイするかゲーム内の目標を達成した際、ゲームをプレイしていない人を含むフレンド全員のニュースフィードにゲームについてのストーリーが表示されるというものがある。ニュースフィードの普及に伴い、ゲームの使用とストーリーの達成を表示することは、開発側が何もせずに新規ユーザーを獲得する助けになりうる。しかしそうすると、ゲームに関心のないユーザーのニュースフィードページをごちゃごちゃさせることにもなりかねない。
2011年8月12日
Facebookは昨日、プラットフォーム上でのゲームの動作について、いくつかの変更を加えたことを発表した。ゲームを利用しない者も含んだ利用者の友人たちのnews feeds上に、ゲームの話題が書き込まれることを含む変更だ。１５分以上ゲームをプレーする場合や、ゲーム内のイベントクリア時などに書き込まれたりする。書き込みがnews feed上で広まるにつれ、ゲーム攻略についての話や自慢話など、開発企業にとっては新しい利用者を無料で得る助けになる。しかし、ゲームに興味が無い人々のもとにまで、news feedsを撒き散らすことになりかねないのだ。
To help users avoid annoying their friends, Facebook will add a new privacy setting that allows them to define on an app-by-app basis who an app can share with. The setting will default to “friends” but users can select to prevent the publishing of game discovery, usage, and achievement stories to news feed and the new Games Ticker.
A Year of Limited Virality
Prior to last September, Facebook apps and games could publish stories to the news feed about users taking in-app actions. While relevant to other gamers and key source of new users for developers, non-gamers often found these stories irrelevant and considered them spam amongst their social content. With this spam threatening to overrun the news feed and drive users away from Facebook, the site closed this viral channel.
昨年9月以前、Facebookのアプリとゲームはアプリ内アクションを受け入れているユーザーについてのストーリーをニュースフィードに表示することができた。開発側にとって他のゲーマーと新規ユーザーの重要なソースに関連する一方、ゲーマー以外にとってはそうしたストーリーは大抵どうでもいいし、彼ら自身のソーシャルコンテンツにおけるスパムだと考えられた。このスパムがニュースフィードにあふれてユーザーをFacebookから離してしまう恐れから、Facebookはこの口コミ経路を閉ざした。
Only the occasional story about a friend starting to play a game would appear in the news feed to those that had not already installed that game, significantly cleaning up the feed but also severely limiting organic growth for apps and games. Facebook also tested a randomly occurring Discover New Games sidebar module, but this wasn’t frequently seen and its placement in the sidebar made it much less noticeable than the old game stories that appeared in the news feed.
Without the free growth channel of prominent placement in the news feed, developers were forced to spend more on ads to gain traction for their apps. Combined with Facebook’s 30% tax on Facebook Credits that in July it made the mandatory payment method for virtual goods within games, the Facebook Platform had become much expensive to develop on then a year ago. This led developers to look for alternatives, making Facebook more potentially vulnerable to competing platforms.
Increased Virality to Fend Off Competitors
競合をかわす、高まった波及力
Yesterday, Google+ launched its own games platform that only charges developers 5% on purchases made in their game, deeply undercutting Facebook Credits. Facebook needed to make a concession to developers to make its Platform more attractive, and so soon after the Google+ games news dropped, it announced several changes to how Canvas pages and bookmarks work, as well as two new viral channels: the Games Ticker and news feed game stories.
The Games Ticker appears in the right sidebar while users play any Facebook Canvas game, and shows real-time updates of in-app activity by friends. These include:
Game install stories
Game usage stories that are triggered if a user plays a game for more than 15 minutes
In-game activity stories triggered when users surpass a friend’s score or complete an objective, published by the new Scores and Achievements APIs
ゲームインストールストーリー
ユーザーが15分以上ゲームをプレイすると起動するゲーム使用ストーリー
フレンドのスコアを上回ったりゲーム内目標を達成した際に起動するゲーム内アクティビティストーリー
新しい「スコアと実績API」ではこれらが表示される
When a user first starts using a game, it shows stories about the same game, but as they play longer also shows stories about games they haven’t installed. The Games Ticker should help keep users engaged with a game by informing them of friends who are playing too, and help them discover new games their friends enjoy. Only people who already play games will see the Games Ticker, but this should be a boon for developers since these are the same people who are likely to have a balance of Facebook Credits to spend and be used to sustained engagement with games.
Still to attain the rapid, massive growth that attracted developers to Facebook in the first place, they’d need access to all users, not just existing gamers. So Facebook may now publish the stories listed above as well as posts users opt to fill out and share to the news feed, allowing all users, including those that don’t play games, to discover games from the home page. Previously, news feed stories were only published when a user first started playing. Facebook will only show a gamer’s friends these stories if its algorithm determines they are highly relevant, so users should only see stories about their closest friends.
These stories allow developers to passively leverage their most engaged users to gain installs from their friends. Facebook explains it may be inappropriate to share news of usage of some types of games and apps, such as those related to “more personal behavior such as dating, weight management or pregnancy” and so developers can turn off these discovery stories through a setting in the Developer app.
本文1行目、「プラットフォーム上で」は「Platformで」と訂正します。