With 2011 drawing to a close, it feels about like the right time to reflect on one of the biggest updates in the history of Torn City; the integration of Facebook.
How did we integrate Facebook into our marketing strategy?
- Facebook “Like” Button
- Torn City Lite
Let’s first take a look at the controversial approach* to integrate the Facebook “Like” button into Torn City player profiles.
* Controversial within the Torn City community due to mixed feelings over Facebook.
Everyone wants to be liked, right? Or at the very least, nobody likes to be unpopular!
Based on this assumption we decided to integrate the Facebook “Like” button into player profiles. The idea behind this was to utilise Facebook’s default behaviour to post the users “Likes” to their wall, automatically telling their Facebook friends that they liked the profile of another Torn City player. This helped to achieve two goals. Firstly, it helped us tell others about Torn City. Secondly, and most importantly, we credited the “Liker” as the referrer should someone join through their “Like” action.
As with everything we do in Torn City, we have to be transparent and clearly define the benefits to the players as Torn City’s community is the life blood of the game.
This is a great way for players to recruit others with very little effort. Let’s not forget all the goodies players receive for successfully recruiting new players, and the massive bonuses they get for mentoring new players to ensure they reach level 10!
If you wasn’t aware of this cool feature, check out your recruit citizen’s page now to see if any of the profiles you’ve “Liked” have brought in any new players.
Next up was the Facebook version of Torn City.
In an attempt to try something a little bit funky and utilise the power of ~31,000 Facebook fans, we decided to create a smaller version of Torn City exclusive to Facebook, known as Torn City Lite.
The idea behind this strategy was to use the power of social media to reach a much larger audience with a potential interest in browser based games. The ability to publish in-game events onto the players Facebook wall, viewable to RL friends, created the snowball effect required for effective viral marketing.
If we could engage players through Torn City Lite on Facebook, we believed we had a much higher chance to migrate these players over to www.torn.com, the full version of Torn City.
Torn City Lite - Key facts and figures:
- Launch date: 1st September 2011
- Total number of players to date: 18,598
- Percentage of players reaching migration level: 15%
- Number of players still active per day: 800
- Torn City Impact: Graph below highlights the number of new players referred from Facebook to Torn City.
