Tag: facebook mobile app

The largest social network is now bringing these games back to its Messenger and mobile app.

Facebook mobile games are on their way, says the company. The goal is to help to replicate the type of success they have seen on Facebook.com. According to the social network, 15% of the time spent on the website is from users playing games.

However, until now, those mobile games were not available on the Facebook mobile app.

Despite the fact that the majority of its users spend most of their time on the app, it didn’t include Facebook mobile games. Instead, the social network encouraged people to use Google Play or the App Store to download the games. They could not be played within Facebook’s mobile app itself.

It is precisely that limitation that will soon be changing. The company announced that it is rolling out Instant Games. This feature makes it possible for Facebook users to play some of their favorite mobile games inside Facebook Messenger and the main Facebook app.

Some of the Facebook mobile games that will be available include Words with Friends and Pac-Man.

This isn’t the first time the king of social media platforms has chosen to host content within itself. Previous efforts have included advertising and web articles among other things. The goal of this strategy is to ensure that users remain within the Facebook mobile apps for as long as possible. Hosting the content instead of sending users elsewhere is an important step in keeping them on the platform.

After all, if users can play mobile games while still in Facebook – where they already were – then why would they leave that app in order to use a different one?

This also presents a considerable mobile marketing opportunity for game app developers. The reason is that Facebook has a massive reach. Therefore, it can place a mobile game in front of a larger number of potential players. Moreover, because users can simply start playing as they don’t need to leave Facebook to download it. Eliminating that additional step can make it far easier to encourage users to give the game a try.

With 1.8 billion users, it is more than likely that Facebook mobile games will have quite the draw for developers and users alike.

Since the social network split its applications into smaller, specific offerings, some interesting trends have developed.

When it comes to the Facebook mobile app, there are actually quite a few from which to choose, and what is interesting about the download stats is that it is the Messenger application that is proving to be the most popular, even over the main flagship offering from the company.

The two social apps have been available since 2012 and the Messenger offering is notably more popular.

In fact, from 2012 through the first six months of 2015, the Messenger mobile app from Facebook has managed to bring in over 646.6 million downloads throughout that time. This, according to the app analytics from the Sensor Tower firm. Throughout that same span of time, the flagship Facebook social media app was able to achieve an impressive but notably lower 568 million downloads.

Aside from those two Facebook mobile apps, none of the brand’s other applications even come close.

Facebook has a range of different applications available for various purposes, but aside from those top two options, none of the other options are nearly as popular. To put it in perspective, all of the other Facebook apps, combined (aside from the flagship and Messenger options) have accumulated a total of 637.5 million downloads, total. That is about 9 million downloads fewer than Messenger’s total, all on its own.

What should be noted is that a number of the Facebook applications are from the company’s Creative Labs division. The purpose of that team is not necessarily the generation of the largest number of downloads. Instead, it is to use its app offerings to better understand the overall Facebook usage experience so that the primary apps can be enhanced to fit the wants and expectations of the users.

For example, the company learned a great deal its mobile apps such as Paper, so that it would be able to better design its instant articles feature, which makes it possible for news organizations to make social network posts of their articles directly onto Facebook. In the case of Messenger, though, the application has managed to hold the first position at both the Google Play and App Store ranks for quite some time.