"Dear victim, you have been bitten by ..." is a phrase all too familiar to Facebook users. It is both a challenge and an invitation to join the legions of werewolves, vampires and zombies lurking in the social network's pages.
In the early days of social networks, viral games with catchy names like "Zombies," "Vampires" and "Werewolves," were all the rage. They amassed over 15 million installations--thanks in part to a bonus that rewards players for spamming friends with invites--in a matter of months.
But once bitten, twice bored. Facebook stat-tracker Developer Analytics reports that of those 15 million viral installations, a mere 153,000, or 1%, of the games' users are active on a daily basis. As a result, social network games are already moving into a second phase of development--dubbed "social games 2.0"--which promises to have more staying power and potentially more revenue.
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