Interview: Viximo On The Social Opportunities Beyond Facebook

While Facebook is the clear leader among social networks, social distribution company Viximo argues that there are many other venues for games that social developers tend to overlook. The Cambridge-based Viximo centers its business on helping developers bring their Facebook games to other social networks, and offers services to help them integrate and localize their titles on these other platforms. In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Viximo CEO Dale Strang outlined the numerous untapped opportunities available to developers outside of Facebook -- particularly in international markets. "If you look at Europe in particular, there are a variety of really well-crafted, highly engaged social network communities that, while fragmented, represent a pretty good opportunity, and that’s the way it is almost everywhere," Strang said. He noted that unlike Facebook, which covers a wide swath of users and demographics, other social networks tend to be "very demographically focused or geographically focused," meaning they host a much more specialized audience than Facebook. Breaking Into New Platforms With this specialization in mind, Strang said that it can be difficult for developers to make headway onto these platforms, and these developers are faced with a number of challenges when bringing their apps outside of Facebook. "A year ago, developers thought, 'Oh well, all the social sites are the same,' and that just isn’t true. No two social platforms are alike enough to bear that description. First you have to integrate with that site, you have to integrate with their social structure, and that’s a fair amount of work." He says that Viximo's goal is to help developers overcome these challenges by bringing their apps over using its own service, and attracting new users through marketing and promotions. The company uses a revenue-sharing model with each of its clients, meaning it shares some of the money brought in from every game it gets up and running on a new social network. He argued that this sort of service will help developers make sense of the social market outside of Facebook, allowing them to bring their apps to new platforms without the need to re-tune their product for these additional networks. "The thing is, Facebook is like the Apple iPhone, but there is no Android equivalent in that market, there is no strong comparable competitor," Strang said, noting that Viximo hopes to defragment the social game market and make these other networks more valuable to app developers. Social Networks Big And Small Despite the numerous services available outside of Facebook, Strang said these smaller networks still prove very valuable to developers, as they offer a new, less crowded venue for social apps. "Many of these networks have audience characteristics that are really attractive to social game developers, and they tend to be growing steadily as opposed to just being thoroughly overwhelmed [with apps]," he said. Strang particularly pointed to social networks like the Spain-based, invitation-only Tuenti, which tends to attract a very active user base. "When you look at Tuenti, that’s a very highly-engaged audience. They have engagement specific metrics that are even better than Facebook in a way," he said, noting that the platform's quality user base makes it a very attractive platform for app developers. A number of other platforms have similarly engaged audiences, Strang said, though some networks are difficult to break into thanks to the unique culture in their app market. Looking at the Google-owned Orkut, for example, an extremely popular social network in Brazil, Strang noted that the market has less tolerance for apps that fill the same niche. "There seems to be less opportunity for copycats [on Orkut] than there is in some other markets. In other markets, somebody will do a farm game, then somebody else will do a farm game, and a third guy will do a farm game, but [on Orkut], if somebody gets there and achieves dominance, game developers will just do a new game there that somebody hasn’t played, so that it’s unique -- it’s specifically local content there," he said. Strang also noted that other platforms, such as the 3D-avatar based IMVU, feature well-established economies that thus lead to regular spending from the platform's users. "The key thing about those guys [like IMVU] is they have a really vibrant virtual economy that’s been running for a long time, so people have currency and they’re used to spending currency when they get in and play games and try games." Of all the social networks available outside of Facebook, Strang said he was particularly excited about Google+, as it could prove influential enough to validate the existence of multiple social networks within a single market. "We don’t hate Facebook or think that Facebook is a bad option for people ... but it’s not going to be the only social gaming platform going forward and that’s good for the market, right? [Google+] allows them to get some pressure on Facebook so they can’t be too draconian, and it allows them to offer a whole different market dynamic," he said.