Atomico bet on a long shot

Techcrunch recently reported that the fund setup by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis has invested $3M in social betting company Betable.

Atomico must have more money than sense, in my view. Betable has been around for awhile now and has done absolutely nothing. Visit the Betable website and you can see the tumbleweed in front of your eyes. This sensationalist story "The Twitter for Betting..." is nothing more than a last gasp publiscity stunt from a struggling start-up.

With its 'rock star' team and no customers there is no doubt that they need the money. The only question is how long it will take for them to burn through it. I tried to post a bet on betable.com along these lines but the site is clever enough to know that I'm in the US.   

Another thing for the geniuses at Atomico to ponder. Gambling apps are prohibited from using Facebook connect. Betable are very unstable ground with their use of the Facebook platform. Betfair has already found out how Facebook can shutdown apps with no notice and no route for arbitration. Investment down the drain in the flick of a switch.

Social betting, as it has been approached by Betable and many others is based on infrequent bets with low stakes. This is a recipe for disaster.

Facebook Recommended Pages - Uncovering interesting social connections

Facebook has been presenting me with some interesting things in the right hand column recently. Today the 2nd recommended page caught my eye. Many people who like Texas Holdem Poker like the page I LOVE ALLAH. Sounds like an unlikely connection.  

Is betting social?

I was asked my opinion about an article written recently by Ruud Verdellen (an old Betfair collegue) for E Gaming Review. I thought the topic was interesting so I decided to post my response here:


"I think there is both social and non-social forms of betting and that the same customers can engage in both. I think sharing betting data is actually a different issue only loosely related to social betting, e.g. people might want to share betting data because they run a tipster service. For me social betting is entering into a bet which involves your friends.

The key is to build product to be social from the ground up, not build a betting product and tack on social at the end. Building a social experience and tacking betting on the end might work but I don’t think anybody has tried it.

The other issue is making money from social betting. For me social sports betting is based around major events and leads to small infrequent bets. Also, if you build your ‘game’ around the Premiership season ,e.g. lastfan.com what happens to your P+L during the 4 month summer break.

On the issue of sharing betting data. I would happily share data if either I did it in retrospect, e.g. I have had a good run and I want to brag. Or, I knowingly enter a bet which is public, e.g. I enter a fixed duration betting tournament with a leaderboard."

When I think about this question I remember days at the track with gangs of friends, evenings at the dogs with colleagues or nights in the casino with friends. Of course betting can be social! However, you go into these scenarios expecting it to be social and actually being social is the primary reason for taking part in the first place. Betting just adds spice to the mix.

Horse Racing - Alive and Well

Above - racegoers at the Aintree meeting

Saturday sees the latest renewal of one of the greatest Horse Races in the World - The Grand National. The race is run annually at Aintree racetrack in the UK.

The race was initiated by William Philip Molyneux, 2nd Earl of Sefton in 1836 and is the most famous Horse Racing event in the UK. Saturday is the day that pretty much every man, woman and child will have a wager on the Grand National. People will queue down the street to get into bookmakers on every high street in the UK. I remember as a child looking through the daily newspaper and picking out a Horse that caught my eye. Perhaps a catchy name or colour. I'm not much more sophisticated today.

The Grand National is a monster 4m 4f course with 16 of the most challenging jumps anywhere in the world. The jumps being almost as famous as the race itself. Take Bechers Brook, originally a 6ft fence with a stream on the far side, hidden by the fence. Needless to say that most of the 40 runners in this race will not last the distance.

This is a truly exciting race where the whole nation gets involved. For about 10 minutes we are all punters, cheering on our Horse and gutted when it falls at the last fence. I recommend getting involved and watching Horse Racing at its best. 16.15GMT Saturday 10th April.

My picks for this years race are The Package and Character Building. However, with 40 runners jumping 16 fences this race is more like a lottery. The winner last year was Mon Mome a 100/1 outsider.

Are Social Games the New Slot Machines?

I've seen a  few blogs recently asking the questions like 'Are Social Games the New Slot Machines?'. In many respects social games are successful for the same reasons that slot games are successful. However, social games have more mainstream appeal because in addition to being social they use gaming mechanics that slot machines have traditionally lacked.

As I have mentioned in previous posts. Social games push some of the same psychological buttons that gambling games are based on. Game concepts of building points to achieve certain goals have parallels with the gamblers preoccupation with strategies to grow their real-money bank. However, social games layer on other powerful game mechanics like leveling up. In addition, social games leverage social forces like collaboration, competition, altruism, reciprocity etc. The resulting combination is all together a more potent mix that results in high levels of engagement and virality.

Zynga recognize the parallels with gambling. There is nothing subtle about the way they have integrated slot machines as side games within their Texas Hold'em. Or the fact that they launch Poker Blitz as a stepping stone for customers of Farmville to convert to players of Texas Holdem.

Successful social gaming companies have realized that they can use gaming psychology to build vast audiences and to sell things. Social Gaming is not only a new genre of game but it is also a new model for retail and ecommerce in general. Gambling is only one area which has parallels with and which will be affected by the rise of social gaming.

 

Useful stuff on Facebook

My big prediction for 2010. This will be the year that really useful applications are launched on Facebook or using Facebook connect.

Some of them may still contain fluffy animals, cows, pets etc. However, the fluff will be supplemented with ecommerce or collaborative tools that serve a purpose other than wasting time.

Right now I'm only aware of 1 company who have such an application on Facebook - Bonvoy. I predict that there will be a new wave of similar ecommerce applications that blend ecommerce with the social graph. Perhaps even games that sell the real thing as well as the virtual good.

Radical thinking indeed. I'm looking forward to seeing what the latest generation of would be entrepreneurs are cooking up.

What Happens to all those Clicks in Mafia Wars and Farmville?

On Friday, Michael Arrington (Techcrunch founder) asked a deliberately provocative question to a monetization panel at GDC. The panel consisted of representatives from 4 of the largest social game developers - Zynga, Playfish, Playdom, Crowdstar. The question was 'why do Facebook games suck?'

The question was somewhat tongue in cheek. Zynga's games (Mafia Wars, Poker, Farmville) alone have around 50 million daily actives on Facebook and growing. Not bad for shallow games with little if any animation.

I don't think Zynga really cares that their games are not considered groundbreaking within the video game industry. For me Zynga is not a game development company. If we are looking for a parallel I think Zynga is closer to Google than EA.

Zynga is renowned for copying successful mass market game formats, e.g. Poker and Mafia Wars. For Zynga the important thing is reach. The games it develops need to have broad based appeal. They minimize the cost of collecting data by adapting proven game formats from other industries or other games companies. The goal is a large audience and hence more data rather than prizes at gaming awards.

Zynga collects vast amounts of behavioural data about its gaming customers. It then analyses this data to optimise game play, virality, sales of virtual goods and increasingly to drive targeted advertising. This becomes a positive feedback loop that drives usage and increases the data available to analyse. Google works in a very similar way with search data.

My prediction is that we will see more advertising related products coming out of Zynga in the near future. Perhaps a social media equivalent of Google Adwords and Adsense. The growth of Facebook connects will allow Zynga to leverage its vast database to provide targeted advertising across the Internet, not just on Facebook.

Cantor Bets on the Movies

Cantor Fitzgerald has announced a futures trading product linked to Hollywood box-office revenues. Cantor already owns a successful play for fun prediction market site based on box-office revenues - HSX.

This is a new legal form of mass market online gambling for the US. What is interesting is that the futures market is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This is the regulator responsible for futures markets in oil, metals and grains. Will the CFTC go one step further and begin regulating futures on sports markets?

St John Destroys The Church of Facebook

Day 2 at GDC 10 was dominated by the exuberant Alex St John. The recently recruited President and CTO of social networking site Hi5. St John was stirring things up to promote the launch of Hi5's developer program.

 


In a carefully choreographed presentation, St John managed to verbally destroy Zynga and Facebook. With a supporting cast of executives from large game publishers, the presentation was clearly aimed at positioning Hi5 as the savior of mass market online gaming. Dismissing popular social games from Zynga for their shallow game dynamics and spam like use of viral channels, St John described Facebook as the church next to Hi5s nightclub. Hi5 will almost certainly be marketed as an edgier alternative to Facebook. The presentation was pure entertainment, unless you were representing Facebook or Zynga.

St John was masterful at switching on a dime from castigating Facebook to befriending game developers in the audience with his encyclopedic knowledge of gaming that stretches back to the origins of the industry. The audience were extremely receptive to his wooing.

St John was a pioneer in the gaming industry and his last website WildTangent is apparently the largest private gaming site in the world with 30 million monthly uniques. Quite impressive considering that until today I had not heard of St John, WildTangent and had very little knowledge of Hi5.

A couple of important platform features were announced. St John wants the ability for users to have private personas, e.g. avatars. This approach is fundamentally different to Facebook's open, public profile. According to St John Facebook's approach is driven by their need to feed advertisers with it's customers profile data. St John is determined to monetize from gaming and not ads. This approach to privacy is much better suited to supporting gambling related applications than Facebook.

Whether or not you believe the hype you can't argue with St John's experience and that of the seasoned executive team he has assembled. I'm sure we will be hearing a lot about Hi5 in the near future.

Play Video Games, Earn Cash

I came across an interesting site yesterday call bringit. The site offers gamers the opportunity to bet against each over the outcome of video games. The supported games cover all the major sporting titles like Fifa 10 and PGA tour. Head to head or tournament structures are also supported.

You could ask the question, what does bringit bring to the table? Is it not possible for friends to wager offline on the same outcome? True, but increasingly our friends are distributed around the globe. Also, the increasingly networked nature of these video games means that players are competing in tournaments with people they don't know. The connection comes from their shared interest rather than actually knowing each other at a personal level. Consequently, there is a need for a trusted middle man to handle the cash.

Social Game Learnings Part 1

Day 1 of the Game Developers Conference is over and what did I learn? The social gaming world is in excellent health. The sessions were oversubscribed and at times it was difficult to move around the conference due to the number of participants.

My key takeaways from the first day:

1. The big are getting bigger and the industry is consolidating. New entrants are still entering the market but it seems like the barriers to entry are rising, e.g. cost of building an audience, cost of developing and maintaining games.  In the medium term, the top tier will continue to dominate - Zynga, Playdom and Playfish.

2. Next generation social games will take graphics and game play to another level. Social games are moving up in terms of quality and consequently investment required to build them. The novelty value of a Mafia or Farm games will wear thin and game publishers will need new ways to wow people. 

3. Virtual goods is the monetization strategy of choice. Although in-game advertising, or product placement, is also showing good results for publishers and advertisers. The imperative to monetize games quickly has spawned a whole new sub-industry of virtual currency providers and monetization platforms.   

4. Gambling has a role to play in the social games space. Both in terms of engaging customers in the game and potentially in terms of monetizing the games. Zynga Texas Holdem is still the best of example of this on Facebook. Others are Roulette Madness, Blackjack Madness and Poker Madness.

5. Operating as a publisher in the social games industry requires special capabilities. 3 month development cycles for new games. 3-5 release per week to update content, add new features, promotions etc. Localisation of content and promotions. Constant demand for more levels, more advanced features and novel game play from high activity players. Near real-time data analysis and content optimisation.  

Then there are the statistics:

• Facebook is dominant (400 million registered users), except in Russia, China, India and Brazil. 
• Virtual goods is a large and growing industry ($8bn in Asia, $1bn in US). 
• Zynga is a big, fast growing company (800-900 employees, $200M revenue)
• Without Facebook notifications, the split between paid acquisitions and organic growth will be 80/20
• 97% of people are willing to engage with a brand in a game if they get something for it, e.g. levelling up. 

Defining social media

Last week, I was asked for my definition of social media. The context was a team meeting where we all shared our definitions.

The first takeaway was that everybody has a different definition of social media. There were some common themes but the scope of the collective definitions was extreme.

I found it very useful for us to understand each others perspective and to debate the various themes that arose during the conversation. We rarely make time to have these high level discussions on trends and definitions.

Below, I've attempted to distill our discussion into a more compact set of definitions for social media. The common themes were people, technology and revenue.
Definition of social media:

• People using technology to interact with each other and with your brand
• Enabling new ways for people to communicate and form relationships on a global scale
• Applications, services and tools to communicate, create and share content
• Community oriented activities – content creation, games, education, fun
  

This led me to an equation that defines social media. The premise is that social media is predominantly about people interacting. The technology facilitates the interaction but too much technology is bad for the overall monetization of social media.

The social media equation:

People * Interactions
----------------------- = Revenue
Technology

Real Money Tournament Games

Tournament structures lend themselves well to social games. People want to compete against their friends and feel that sense of satisfaction that comes from progressing through rounds or climbing leader boards.

I was somewhat surprised to find Yoo-Mee games offering tournament skill games with real money prizes within a Facebook application. This could be construed as real money gambling on skill games. But obviously the rules can be interpreted in different ways.

Gambling State Side

As you may have noticed my blog has been somewhat dormant over the past 4 months. During that time I have been on sabbatical in Australia. Then about 4 weeks ago, I started work for Betfair TVG in San Francisco.

This is an exiting time to join the Betfair US organization. Until recently, the Betfair US team consisted of 3 full-time employees. Since Betfair acquired TVG, at the beginning of 2009, the team has been growing steadily. Now things are about to accelerate as we expand our operations in the US.

So what are my first impressions of the gambling industry in the US? I have attended a number of technology and social media events in San Francisco since I arrived. The most striking thing is that people here don't realise that it is legal to bet on Horse Racing online.

Indeed, the anti gambling lobbyists have done a good job of relegating the Horse Racing industry to the fringes of society. At today's President Day meet at Golden Gate Fields I was surprised by the small turnout at the event. That and the terrible odds on offer. I understand that the track is up for auction at the end of the month.

However, gambling in the US continues to thrive. Online Poker is a thriving industry dominated by the offshore operations of Poker Stars and Full Tilt. This despite the US ban on online Poker. There are also numerous offshore sports betting companies that continue to take bets from US customers.

In the hottest new industry of social media, gambling related content is continuing to dominate. I noticed that Zynga Pokers Facebook fan page now has the highest number of fans of any fan page. This is the Poker game that is played for virtual currency but you buy the virtual currency with your credit card.

Then there is the gambling capital of the world - Las Vegas. Recently, broker Cantor Fitzgerald launched a 'mobile' product to enable customers to bet on sports whilst at Vegas casinos. Signalling their intent to leverage their trading background to take a piece of the sports betting action.

I can only surmise that this is part of a long term strategy to prepare for regulatory change. The economics of building and maintaining bespoke devices and software for Vegas only sports betting just doesn't make sense.

The gambling industry in the US is far more complex than the situation in the UK. There is everything to play for in the US. Yet the regulatory framework has created a very uneven playing field for operators and consumers. Undaunted, we will continue to modernize the US Horse Racing industry and hopefully create some cutting edge gambling products.