Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Check Out The Facebook & Zynga Podcast
We are back LIVE today at 6PM ET / 3 PM PT On Blogtalkradio.com
We will continue our discussion about Facebook disabling account and their anti social behavior. We will give you updates on your favorite games and take your calls to try and help you get some answers.
All you do is wait till show goes LIVE and call this number Call-in Number: (347) 327-9074. You also have the option to talk VIA Skype by clicking talk and that is a free connection. I am sorry for my deaf fans I dont have an option for you at this time but I do have a LIVE Chat that goes on during show and I will see your questions and will try to answer them in the chat room during the show as well as say it on the show. So Tune in and see what you missed during our past shows and please tell all your friends.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/john-sweene
“This podcast is not endorsed by or affiliated with Zynga Game Network Inc. or Facebook, Inc.”
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Facebook Is Becoming More And More Of An Anti Social Site Than A Social Site
Facebook the world's largest social site is becoming more and more like an anti social site everyday. They are disabling accounts for not using actual pictures of one's self, preventing people from adding friends to play games, disabling people from posting on their walls messages to their friends and the list goes on and on.
Over the past few weeks 100's of people I know, who play the games on their site, have been disabled for not using a real picture or having a pseudo name. They give no warning and they require you to send in an id with that account name. So these people are not getting their accounts back because they are using the site to play games and socialize with their online game friends.
Yes, this does violate Facebook's terms of service, but they were made before the social game craze took hold on Facebook. Now it is a big business for them as they get 30% of the social games profits when a person purchases credits to buy a virtual game product and this turns into millions for them. But they have yet to adjust the TOS to reflect this and don't seem like they are in a hurry to do so.
The people who play games also are getting disabled for posting to many messages or requests for help to play the game. Now this is the fault of both the social game developers and Facebook as the games require you to ask for help and Facebook refuses to tell the users the limits on posting. So the social games need to put limits on the amount of posts their player can put up a day to protect them. And Facebook needs to be more forth coming on what the rules are.
The social game companies are now trying to help the Facebook users by trying to go to bat for them in helping them get their disabled accounts back. They are also trying to track the number of accounts disabled as this is not good for them as it cut into their profits when a user is disabled and this is big business for them. To give you an idea how big it is, Zynga, the largest developer of games on Facebook, is on pace to make almost 700 million dollars this year and should make well over a billion dollars in 2011.
The newest thing Facebook is doing to their users is preventing them from adding friends to their accounts. They are telling them that their request can not be sent. And then ask them if they know them personally? Then tell them to go to the help center for an answer because Facebook does not have a real customer service department and has no telephone customer service.
So once again the users suffer because they are trying to be social and Facebook is preventing it. The social games want you to add friends to play the games but Facebook doesn't want you to add them unless you know them. The social games are also looking for solutions for this one as well.
Facebook is a good site to socialize on if it is only with your family and friends. Try to play the games on their site then you are a target. They don't give you any clear guidelines on how to use the site, they have no real customer service department, they expose your private information to the world including your credit information when you buy game credits and give you no real warning that you are in violation and are putting your account in jeopardy. Not a good thing to be doing if you are a social site. So you decide, are they social or are they anti social?
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Z Lotto for Zynga Games
Z Lotto by Zynga : A new scratch and win game. Each ticket allows the player to scratch three spots for a chance to win a loot prize from one of four sets. If one of those spots is a star, the player wins.
Loot sets are for Mafia Wars, PetVille, FarmVille, YoVille and coming soon FrontierVille. There are 4 prizes to win for each game and they seem to be pretty good especially the Mafia Wars ones, Set 1- Bola Knife 65 attack/27 defense, Set 2- Protective Shirt 27 attack/64 defense, Set 3- Yeti Snow Cruiser 63 attack/26 defense and Set 4- Jackal 25 attack/65 defense.
So how do you get this? Well you need to register your email and set up an account with Zynga, and this is very easy and quick to do, just click this link http://lotto.zynga.com/ and fill out the information. If you already have an account with Zynga there is no need to re-register just log in to your account. You will then get a prompt to check your email to confirm your account.
Once confirmed you will see you have a scratch off to try and win a prize. You then click on 3 boxes to see if you win. You need to find the star & if you find it and win you will be asked to chose a prize. You pick what game you want to get prize from and collect it. Then you will be prompted to ask your friends for more tickets and you can get up to 20 tickets per day from your friends. All you do is either email your friends a request to send you tickets or you can use a link that you can copy and paste for Facebook on your profile.
You will receive in your email a notification every time your friends send you a ticket. You then just click the link and click play and it opens up a new scratch off card to try and win. You can also send every friend a ticket back right from there so they can play too.
You can also book mark the page so you can go back each day to play. This game is for a limited time only so if you want free loot check it out. Have fun everyone
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
How To Use Facebook Places For Your Business
Oil spills,bad economy,lack of funds to advertise the are just a few of the things hurting businesses in the Tampa Bay area as well as in the rest of the country. Businesses need to be penny wise when it come to advertising. Facebook has just introduced Facebook Places which may help and best part it is for free.
For companies that have a physical location it makes sense to have a Facebook Place in order to track the people who are stopping by and let them know whats going on there.It also helps during the tourist season as lots of people use their phones to help guide them Here is a quick step by step guide to help get your place of business exposure.
- Create Your Place: You’ll need to load up the Facebook iPhone application or go to Facebook for touch devices site and check if your place exists already. You can do this by searching for the place. If it doesn’t exist, you can quickly create it by clicking on “Add” or the “+” sign depending on whether or not you are using Facebook for touch devices or Facebook for iPhone.
- Claim The Place As Yours: You’ll need to log in to Facebook and search for the Place that you’ve created. Once you find your business place you can click on the “Is this your business?” link at the bottom of the place and claim it. You will be prompted for information to confirm your business information such as physical address and other business related information.
- Merge Your Place & Page: Finally merge the Place and your Facebook Business Page (if you have one and if you dont I suggest you get one it is Free and really helps you get more business) once you’ve completed the verification proces. The result is a combined Page which effectively serves as your local business page. The new merged design will be completely different from your existing Facebook Pages but will still have all the same content your current Facebook page has so you wont lose anything you have already done to it.
So there you have it all in all a very easy process. And it is a cheap and effective way to expose your business to the world. Now remember Facebook Places is only available in the US right now on your phone but is viewable to the entire world on Facebook (500 Million Users).
(Reprinted from my new column at Examiner.com and please feel free to subscribe to my daily column)
Monday, August 23, 2010
Attack on Cancer Mock War - August 27th-29th
Mock War Details:
When you sign up for this mock war, you will be place on a side chosen at random. The mock war will be held from August 27th at 12:00 pm Central Time (1:00 pm EST), through August 29th, 6:00 pm Central Time (6:00 pm EST).
This war will only have the following rules: NO HITLISTING, and NO ASKING MAFIA TO ATTACK.
Sides will be determined randomly, and not by clans or tags. ALL TAGS ARE WELCOME.
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT YOU MUST FILL OUT THE REGISTRATION FORM IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MOCK WAR. https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform
Here is the link to Donate: http://www.cancerresearch.org/give/memor
If you are in the U.K. -http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/
Here is the link to the group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=103653123026705&v=info&ref=ts
Zynga's Advice On How They Can Help To Get You Unbanned On Facebook
As you know by now Facebook seems to be on the warpath and are disabling peoples accounts left and right. In some cases Facebook is right but in most cases they are wrong and are punishing the innocent and Zynga see's this and has offered to help you get your accounts back. They are not guaranteeing anything but will try.
[8/20/10 4:13:38 PM] zynga: So obviously we want you to play the game and banned accounts keep you from doing so. It is not good for us nor is it good for you. So in order to help track these issues, we have a process we will need you guys to follow...
-----------------------------------------------
If you get banned...
Submit a Customer Service (CS) ticket... "I've been banned from facebook!" or something to that extent. You will get a response with a specific escalation URL for Facebook
Use that URL to appeal your ban to facebook...
If your ban is lifted... Halelua!
If not...
Copy the response you get from facebook and reply back to the CS ticket with the response. We will then be able to take that information and escalate it from our end. So... here is why we need to do it this way...
We need you to submit the ticket so that we can have a solid tracking in our system so no one gets dropped in an email shuffle. Use the URL that we provide you to appeal, while there are many URLs out there that can do the samething, this one is specific to our issues.
And we want to know the response that you get because we want to know what is being communicated back to you.
Use the above guideline if you ever find yourself FB banned.
Also, it was hinted at that accounts that are looked at are accounts that are created only for gaming purposes, have no personal data, one or two cartoon avatars at most. So basically fake names, energy mini's, and so on. Read below:
[8/20/10 5:02:16 PM] zynga: I don't... Zynga doesn't condone the creation of fake accounts for the purpose of playing the game... but this I can say...
[8/20/10 5:03:42 PM] zynga: If all you have is one cartoon image in your account and no personal info/message posts... it is highly suspect :).
[8/20/10 5:03:56 PM] zynga: And we completely support Facebook's ToS :).
We asked Zynga if there will be a platform for us to play on that does not require a FB logon (if you are banned):
[8/20/10 5:16:29 PM] zynga: Yes... we are looking at options to improve the game and playing experience... any change... be it swaping energy packs in game or creating an entire platform, requires time to plan, program, test and implement. The larger the change, the longer it is going to take. All I can say is that there are many projects currently in many different phases... and we still have to provide new challenges to keep the game interesting for all level of players :). Fortunately we have teams of people who are able to work on multiple projects at one time. So while it may seem that we keep launching missions or new cities... that doesn't mean we don't have another team working on other issues/improvements.
So if you have been disabled, give this a try and see if this helps. Remember Zynga isn't promising anything and they have no control over what Facebook does BUT they do make the most money for Facebook than any other Social Game on the site so they might listen to them.
Give it a try it cant hurt and continue to do do what I recommended in my other blog by sending emails to Facebook and try to be respectful.
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