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Google Plus, the latest pretender to Facebook’s throne, has made yet another step in the competition against the social media giant. They have introduced games, undeniably an integral part of the online community experience, and hit big doing so with titles like Angry Birds and Zynga Poker.
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Zynga Poker is an online free-to-play poker game with arguably the biggest community among its kind, even surpassing the trademarked WSOP game. It has been speculated that Zynga, the developer of popular online applications like FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Treasure Isle, might be the biggest winner of a future regulation of the US market with its player base consisting of over 36 million users, many of whom possibly willing to become a real money player if Zynga offered such an option.
Now, the company expands into the Google Plus camp as well, likely to the dismay of Mark Zuckerberg’s rival company that has almost exclusively provided Zynga with a social media appearance so far. On behalf of Google Plus, Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra commented the new stage in the development of their platform in the official developer’s blog [4]:
“Today we’re adding games to Google+. With the Google+ project, we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. But sharing is about more than just conversations. The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life.
That means giving you control over when you see games, how you play them and with whom you share your experiences. Games in Google+ are there when you want them and gone when you don’t.
When you’re ready to play, the Games page is waiting—click the games button at the top of your stream. You can see the latest game updates from your circles, browse the invites you’ve received and check out games that people you know have played recently. The Games page is also where your game accomplishments will appear. So you can comfortably share your latest high score—your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too.”
One edge Goole Plus certainly seems to have over its rival is that they offer 95% of the application revenue to the developers, compared to the 70% Facebook provides, according to Gambling911.com. This might well lure even more devs to G+, especially those who are struggling on FB, which also contributes to the tense competition between the two super companies.