I took part in a panel discussion on the topic of building a business on the Facebook platform which put this all in perspective. Going back to the beginning, when we released WarBook on Facebook, we saw that people were selling WarBook currency on Ebay. Our development strategy has always had a business case baked in - branding, virtual, advertising - they’ve all shown great results for us.

That said, I still feel that the most important way to grow a successful business is to always focus on the user. The happiness of the user, the user experience and engagement should be paramount. Looking at Facebook Connect - it has massive potential to invert the whole social graph. None of us can predict how this is going to alter the way we build businesses on the social web. Tremendous opportunity for developers and entrepreneurs is right around the corner - if the product you are developing isn’t helping your user, entertaining them or holding their interest you’ll miss out.

The Zuckerberg keynote at this year’s F8 promised more openness and more accessibility on and off the Facebook platform. Through Facebook Connect you will be able take your social graph with you, onto other sites, with a single login. Your actions there will show up in your Facebook news feeds, sharing your external and internal updates with everyone in your network.

But Zuckerberg also talked about new policies and restrictions on what outside products will be allowed to run on the platform, including certification procedures and ranking. Yes, it’s good for the users to have the best apps up front and center but then, there’s only so much room at the top. Mark did not address gaming at all in his keynote and we’ll be interested to see how the new FB system works for games. We support the young and innovative game developers who’s games are addicting - but if they have to deal with restrictive invite and sharing policies they’re at a disadvantage. SGN will be continuing the dialogue with FB to make sure that social games get top billing. The numbers say it all - give the people what they want.

When you send a gift from the Mozilla Firefox collection to a friend, they will see this link encouraging them to try Firefox:

So how about showing your support for Firefox and sending these gifts to all your friends? They’ll thank you later.

There are a lot of cool things about this bar; it’s customizable (we currently have light and dark versions), it shows what your friends are playing (hence, the “much more social”), and it’s still not intrusive (though it does catch your eye). Implementing the bar in your games puts you on the map to get new users every day. To make it happen, check out the documentation on our API Documentation page or included with the client download of your choice.

The first major improvement is the new registration form:

This version is as simple as can be. All you have to do is enter the Facebook app ID for your game and your e-mail address, along with the four optional “game stat names,” and we will pull all the relevant data from Facebook to register your application. We hope this makes the registration process as simple and error-free as possible for everyone.

The next major improvement is the “view games” page:

You can see here that we have comparative bar graphs for the clicks in / clicks out SGN GameBar metrics. This should help developers determine how their games are faring in terms of clicks given/received. We’ll have more stats available soon.

Another big improvement is the editing interface, which can be done from the same page:

I’ll have more information soon about the “Templates” tab.

Aside from all these interface improvements, we’ve also set this application up so that games will get automatic e-mails when they are approved or denied, and every denial will come with a reason to help developers get there games approved the next time they submit.

I hope developers will find this new interface much easier to use and I encourage everyone to submit their games right away! Check out the SGN Developer application here.

• http://www.myspace.com/tunnelgame
• http://www.myspace.com/playjetman
• http://www.myspace.com/blockygame
• http://www.myspace.com/froggergame
• http://www.myspace.com/herdaword
• http://www.myspace.com/asteroidsgame

Enjoy!

To view the stats for your game, just log in to the SGN Developer application and go the tab “GameBar Stats.” Currently, we just have simple cumulative numbers, but soon we will have more in-depth statistics for the past 24 hours as well as graphs to make it all visually appealing. Due time, due time.

Also, I’m happy to say we have over 40 games in the SGN Platform, and we are working on many more features, both for the GameBar and the Gaming Hub application. Just watch this space, and if you haven’t joined the SGN Platform yet, then what are you waiting for???

The SGN GameBar is far more effective than typical advertising methods; with a low footprint and the SGN brand value, it has the potential to drive valuable traffic to any game that’s included. It works on a merit system; a game has to implement and include the bar to be featured across other games. Other than that, there are no restrictions; it’s opt-in and developers can leave at any time… but why would anyone want to leave?

We also launched a new version of our site today, with our full library of games showcased. I think it’s really cool.

If you are a game developer and you are looking for more ways to promote your game and increase user loyalty, now is the time to get into our platform! I’ll be available all day tomorrow to talk so just hit up developers [at] socialgn.com.