Facebook’s Texas Hold’em application by Zygna has 11 million users and is in the top 10 list of all game applications.
The growth of Facebook applications is creating a new audience for online poker. Online poker applications on Facebook are the fastest growing and most popular. The most popular application on the 200-million user site is Texas Hold’em poker by Zynga.
The London Financial Times has reported that the Zynga Texas Hold’em poker application has more than 11 million users on Facebook and is still growing. This is a number that all online poker rooms are aspiring to capitalize on.
Gareth Davis, Facebook chief of games, said that there has been an increase in the number of people using Facebook in order to play games, poker being a top ten choice by users. "With all that growth, what we've seen is a tremendous interest in the usage of games," Mr. Davis explained. "Poker just passed 11 million monthly users, which is the same size as (popular online role-playing game) World of Warcraft." Mr. Davis believes that a shift away from solo video games to more social forms of entertainment is driving the interest in poker and other applications.
Even though the application is played with pretend money and not for real cash, it is believed that Zynga is raking in between $50 million and $60 million annually in revenue, mostly from virtual goods like poker chips in its Facebook application.
Online poker room sites are hoping that this virtual application will convert casual players to playing for real money in other online poker room sites. Many online poker rooms, and even some poker pros, have fan pages on Facebook; some of those have attracted a large number of members too. There are several poker applications, and while they may not be enjoying the success of the Zynga one, Poker Palace has more than 2 million users, and there are a few others with tens of thousands of users.
The social networking demographic is very wide, and online poker and casino sites could do well to reach out to those users looking to play free online poker with their friends, and offer them the full online poker experience.
Patricia Jones
http://www.pokerteam.com/
pattypj.jones@gmail.com
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