Thanks to the new sidebar module introduced by the social networking site and called “Discover New Games” there is a novel opportunity for Facebook account holder to be acquainted with unknown to him games played by his friends. This discovery channel displays several of user’s friends playing a certain game. The new feature is likely able to lower the developers’ trust to the marketing that is carried out with the purpose to increase the popularity of the games.
“Discover New Games” shows the title of the game that was not installed by the user yet but is already being played by the people on his friends’ list. There are also the names of these friends playing the game and their small photos there. The icon of the game with a link entitled “Play Now” are displayed right under the friends’ names. The creator of this module intended to enlarge the number of game players while friend’s choice of a specific game appears as an indirect invitation to join it.
Since 2008 there has been a module called “People You May Know” on Facebook that appears on the right sidebar and is aimed to be user’s assistant in finding of new friends. This module is a kind of helper for the one mentioned above.
There are also such modules on Facebook as “Which city do you live in?” completed while registration and “Recommended Pages” introducing the third-party content which are applied by the social networking site. The game developers acquire now the chance to take advantages of using of these all modules.
Links to the game may be viral that is why the system of protection against viruses is constantly being increased. The results and achievements of the game player were previously shown to all of his friends which of course served for increasing of links to the game as the interest of friends to an unfamiliar game was kindled.
But since September this info is available only to the users who has already installed the game and play it. That means that “Discovery” news feed stories can be visible for users only after game installation.