Endeavour Partners

At the moment, we’re doing some research on the future of web services.

One of the things I was exploring was the economics of social networks and social gaming, when I came across this fascinating post from Michael Arrington on TechCrunch about the [alleged] economics and ethics of some Facebook games such as Mobsters and FarmVille:

Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can’t stop applauding the companieslong enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success

If an ecosystem is to survive and thrive, it must be built on a sound foundation; that includes a solid ethical foundation. Although these tactics may drive short-run growth and profits, they are not a basis for an enduring ecosystem. Users will become disaffected, word-of-mouth will suffer, and particularly in an environment such as Facebook, designed to facilitate communication amongst friends, information about these scams will spread like wildfire.

Clearly, some of those involved are a little sensitive about this:

For the avoidance of all possible doubt, this is not a critique of the games themselves. Rather it’s an indictment of (1) the people conducting the scams [like these] and (2) those who condone them.

Note: amended thus and [thus] to reflect continuing debate on this topic