Social gaming is allegedly making a lot of money. Mmost of the data is private so difficult to confirm this, but estimates are the top 3 compnaies Zynga, Playdom and Playfish are doing revenues of $300M per year. Companies such as offer pal media are powering the monetization of th these social gaming companies.
Mike Arrignton calls out Anu Shukla at a conference on what he calls unethical practices of these companies that is leading to a downward spiral of hell. Anu responds in kind calling his accusations ‘Shit, doubleshit and bullshit’. This has lead to a lot of discussion on the blogosphere.
I must say I see a lot of questionable to downright unethical type of games and offers on facebook. Many in my friends list fall for these tricks. This is an important issue that needs to be looked at. BTW, Mike is taking sides by calling Offerpal media and Zynga bad guys while calling slide a good guy. He follows this space lot more closely than me, so he earns the right to call companies out. But I have seen questionable practices from slide too (they used to force people to invite friends when signing up for their apps). So I don’t think any company is innocent on this.