WordOfMouth
Latest
Study: Mobile gamers download five titles a month, mostly through word of mouth
A new study released by Applifier says that word of mouth is still the number one way mobile game players find the games they like. That doesn't necessarily mean in-person discussion about mobile games, however, though 36 percent of users did report that hearing from a friend or family member was a major source of games, and 25 percent of users said actually seeing a friend or family member play a game was one way they found out about their favorites. However, 43 percent of users say reading user reviews was the main way they found what they liked to play. Video is another big game pusher -- 70 percent of users polled by Applifier say that they watched online video about mobile games in the last week, and 45 percent of users said that watching the video had them downloading that same game right away. Most mobile game players, according to Applifier, download up to five mobile games a month, which is just a little more than one per week. Those games are played for about three hours per week, though obviously that's spread out across the entire week, so most likely little bits here and there rather than three hours at a time. And 20 percent of users, said Applifier, can be classified as "sharers," which means they are more likely to download more games, play more often and for longer and convert to paying users. All interesting stuff. For all of the infrastructure for app discovery built by Apple and others, odds are that you're still hearing about your favorite iOS downloads from the people that you know best anyway.
Verizon gives Droid 2 Global a Facebook shout-out
We joked that the Droid 2 didn't need a marketing campaign, the leaks were getting so much press, and lo and behold, its Droid 2 Global refresh hit shelves without a single official word from Verizon. We figured the wireless carrier had taken our idea to heart and would rely entirely on word of mouth to sell the 1.2GHz worldphone, but if that's the case, Big Red's bending the rules -- it's given the handset a quick Facebook plug to speed that process along. At 215 characters, the status update is a little bit long to retweet, but you can Like it all you want... or even use it as a soapbox if you really must.
