MKT 595 JOURNAL ENTRY 1 - Social Media / Virtual Gaming

Social Media / Virtual Gaming has become a very popular new craze for Internet users who use sites such as Facebook and MySpace.  At the beginning of 2009, a company known as Zynga began developing social media games such as Mafia Wars, YoVille, Farmtown, etc.  These games allowed players to interact with friends and other online users while in a role-playing environment.  It didn't take long for these social media games to become a very lucrative business for a wide variety of companies.  Many of the games required the use of "virtual currency" in order to develop your "virtual persona" or "virtual enterprise."  For example, in the game Farmtown, players must acquire things such as food to feed their animals.  These virtual necessities could be purchased with virtual coins or currency.  What is interesting is that this virtual currency could actually be acquired by real currency.  As a result, companies found a way to make money and acquire new accounts through incentive offers on these social media games.  OfferPal is a company that acts as a currency intermediary between a company and an online user on behalf of the social media site.  For example, a company may offer an online user $500 "virtual coins" for a specific social media game if the online user signs-up for an offer that the company has.  OfferPal will actually manage the posting of the offer, and it will translate the actual currency into virtual currency for the company and customer.  Few people know that these online currency intermediaries have actual economists working for them to better understand the translation of real money into virtual money.  Social Media gaming and online incentive offers are something to keep your eye on in the next few years.  The more popular they become, the more this enterprise will develop.  I am not sure if our economy is fully prepared for the introduction of virtual currency quite yet, but it is out there.  I am using this as my first journal entry because I used to manage the affiliate program for my employer, and I worked specifically with these social media incentive offers.