Category: Featured News

Facebook mobile games like Pac-Man are coming back

| December 2, 2016

The largest social network is now bringing these games back to its Messenger and mobile app.

Facebook mobile games are on their way, says the company. The goal is to help to replicate the type of success they have seen on Facebook.com. According to the social network, 15% of the time spent on the website is from users playing games.

However, until now, those mobile games were not available on the Facebook mobile app.

Despite the fact that the majority of its users spend most of their time on the app, it didn’t include Facebook mobile games. Instead, the social network encouraged people to use Google Play or the App Store to download the games. They could not be played within Facebook’s mobile app itself.

Facebook Mobile Games - PAC-MANIt is precisely that limitation that will soon be changing. The company announced that it is rolling out Instant Games. This feature makes it possible for Facebook users to play some of their favorite mobile games inside Facebook Messenger and the main Facebook app.

Some of the Facebook mobile games that will be available include Words with Friends and Pac-Man.

This isn’t the first time the king of social media platforms has chosen to host content within itself. Previous efforts have included advertising and web articles among other things. The goal of this strategy is to ensure that users remain within the Facebook mobile apps for as long as possible. Hosting the content instead of sending users elsewhere is an important step in keeping them on the platform.

After all, if users can play mobile games while still in Facebook – where they already were – then why would they leave that app in order to use a different one?

This also presents a considerable mobile marketing opportunity for game app developers. The reason is that Facebook has a massive reach. Therefore, it can place a mobile game in front of a larger number of potential players. Moreover, because users can simply start playing as they don’t need to leave Facebook to download it. Eliminating that additional step can make it far easier to encourage users to give the game a try.

With 1.8 billion users, it is more than likely that Facebook mobile games will have quite the draw for developers and users alike.

PayPal mobile commerce represented 1 in 3 Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales

| December 1, 2016

Of all the online orders processed by the payment platform, one third were transacted over mobile.

According to new PayPal mobile commerce data, one third of online purchases on Thanksgiving and Black Friday using that payment method were from smartphones or tablets.

Mobile devices made up one third of the total payment volume over PayPal on those two days.

These PayPal mobile commerce statistics also help to illustrate the importance of that payment platform to e-commerce as a whole. It is clear that consumers are using this transaction method on an increasing basis to complete their online purchases. When it comes to some of the top shopping days of the year such as Thanksgiving and Black Friday, that can make a significant impact on retailers’ bottom lines.

PayPal mobile commerceThe recent data suggesting that one third of PayPal payments for online purchases on those two days only underscores reports from other sources. Data analyses from other firms also suggest a similar trend where mobile accounted for about a third of Black Friday online spending.

The PayPal mobile commerce figures align very closely with the data from Adobe regarding Black Friday.

Adobe’s data pointed out that online sales during that one shopping day broke the $3 billion mark. It also pointed out that mobile devices accounted for just over a billion of those transactions.

The new figures from PayPal only add more weight to the confirmation of that trend. This also helps to provide insight into a larger part of the market, as its data adds to that from other payment methods.

PayPal currently has more than 192 million active customers as well as 15 million active merchants.

The shopping trend for both Thanksgiving Day as well as Black Friday revealed that about one third of its online purchases were through PayPal mobile commerce. This helps to show that it was not just a single day blip but that it may be a consistent trend in online shopping. This was particularly true as the total payment volume was not the same on both days. Still, the percentage of mobile shopping remained steady despite the difference in total spending.