Americans increase use of text messaging

This morning in the Los Angeles Times there is a great article on how text messaging in the United States is taking off and is even stating that Americans have gone text crazy. For examples in Dec 2007 Americans sent 48 billion text messages in that one month and in Dec 2008 that number increased almost three-fold with 110 billion text message being set that month.

It is interesting to note that from the article and as expected a majority of those sending text messages in the US are teens even though 61% of adults are now expected to be using text messaging. As noted in the article much of these text messages are private conversations, so it will be interesting to see how will mobile marketing companies continue to target this current and future market and what role will advertisers ultimately play? How will private text conversations among teens translate into monetization and increase revenues for companies involve in the text message/mobile business landscape. Furthermore, Google’s purchase of AdMob will only continue to harvest the interest in this industry.

How many text messages will be sent by Americans in Dec 2009? 250 Billion?

2009: The Year of Social Gaming

If 2007 was considered the year of social networking then 2009 and now 2010 must be the year of social gaming. The ever increasing worldwide popularity of Apple’s iPhone and mobile functionality of Facebook along with the release of the Google Android has allowed consumers to instantly use their mobile platforms to download games and interact with many of millions of worldwide gamers on the go, which shows an explosive growth towards social networks and games on those platforms. Facebook has played a major role in the increased presence of social gaming where it has made games a popular category and as of today, the top 10 facebook games has accounted for over 260 million active monthly users including such games as Farmville, Mafia Wars, Pet Society and RestaurantCity.

Within the past 24 hours, two of the leading social gaming companies and Facebook application developers, Zynga and RockYou have received additional rounds of financing and this comes off the big news last week when Electronic Arts (ERTS) acquired social gaming company, Playfish for $300 million. The $375 million that was used to acquire and further finance these social gaming companies shows a shift between traditional console gaming towards social and digital gaming. Read more