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Instant speculation abounds with Facebook Messenger’s Instant Games

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This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here. Subscription media service The Information broke a story on Friday about Facebook Messenger allegedly planning to integrate HTML5 games into their platform, enabling users to play “Instant Games” directly in their chat feed. Assuming the reports are accurate, I find this development quite interesting for a number of reasons. First, this represents further confirmation that the rumors of HTML5’s demise in gaming have been greatly exaggerated (I’ve long argued as such for the reasons I cite here and here). Secondly, this feature will undoubtedly boost engagement, thus extending the share of time consumers spend on the FB Messenger platform. Combined with Instagram, Oculus, and Facebook itself, imagine how many hours per week Facebook will capture from consumers on one of its properties. Additionally, the monetization opportunities should be plentiful. Facebook could enrich its targeted advertising…

mark-bivens_portraitThis guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here.


html5-games-for-fb-messenger

Subscription media service The Information broke a story on Friday about Facebook Messenger allegedly planning to integrate HTML5 games into their platform, enabling users to play “Instant Games” directly in their chat feed. Assuming the reports are accurate, I find this development quite interesting for a number of reasons.

First, this represents further confirmation that the rumors of HTML5’s demise in gaming have been greatly exaggerated (I’ve long argued as such for the reasons I cite here and here).

Secondly, this feature will undoubtedly boost engagement, thus extending the share of time consumers spend on the FB Messenger platform. Combined with Instagram, Oculus, and Facebook itself, imagine how many hours per week Facebook will capture from consumers on one of its properties.

Additionally, the monetization opportunities should be plentiful. Facebook could enrich its targeted advertising profiles with deeper knowledge on users habits. FB could also grab a slice of revenue from in-game purchases or even playable HTML5 ads like those in Neko Atsume. Could Instant Games serve as a backdoor to an FB equivalent of an App Store?

Finally, I could imagine how Instant Games could enable Messenger to strengthen its position in the few markets where it is not the leading messaging app. Although I suspect FB Messenger will not dethrone WeChat in China, countries like South Korea (Kakao), Japan, Taiwan, Thailand (all three, Line) may all come back in play.

I’ll be curious to watch how Facebook’s Messenger team selects its games for this service, and in particular whether they tailor their game selection based on market vs. pursuing a U.S.-centric content strategy for instance.

DrawChat lets you send hand-drawn pictures over Facebook Messenger

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See the original story in Japanese. Prime Again is a Tokyo-based startup known for having developed the photo decoration app DecoAlbum. Readers may recall that we interviewed them back in May. Recently the company unveiled a new app called DrawChat, allowing users to exchange messages using drawings and stickers. The app is available for both iOS and Android in Japanese, Thai, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and English. It costs 250 yen (or $2.99), but is currently free until September 9th as part of a limited time offer. While Line, Kakao Talk, and other messaging apps are competing fiercely in the Asia region, Facebook messaging is still somewhat inadequate when it comes to expressing yourself as you might with some mobile chat apps. While Facebook has 340 million monthly active users in the region, so companies cannot help but using for their user acquisition efforts. Send decorated messages to any of your Facebook friends The Draw Chat app makes use of Facebook’s Chat API. When you use the app, it’s easy to forget that it’s even running on the Facebook platform. You can send decorated messages to any of your Facebook friends, regardless of whether or not they have the app…

See the original story in Japanese.

drawchat-logo

Prime Again is a Tokyo-based startup known for having developed the photo decoration app DecoAlbum. Readers may recall that we interviewed them back in May. Recently the company unveiled a new app called DrawChat, allowing users to exchange messages using drawings and stickers. The app is available for both iOS and Android in Japanese, Thai, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and English. It costs 250 yen (or $2.99), but is currently free until September 9th as part of a limited time offer.

While Line, Kakao Talk, and other messaging apps are competing fiercely in the Asia region, Facebook messaging is still somewhat inadequate when it comes to expressing yourself as you might with some mobile chat apps. While Facebook has 340 million monthly active users in the region, so companies cannot help but using for their user acquisition efforts.

Send decorated messages to any of your Facebook friends

The Draw Chat app makes use of Facebook’s Chat API. When you use the app, it’s easy to forget that it’s even running on the Facebook platform.

You can send decorated messages to any of your Facebook friends, regardless of whether or not they have the app themselves. The company hopes people will use DecoAlbum to keep track of memories with friends, and that they will use DrawChat for their instant messaging. Among Facebook’s many APIs, there are very few apps using Facebook’s Chat API. The company aspires to dominate this niche by releasing more apps using the API.

Prime Again was chosen to be included in the first batch of startups at Docomo Innovation Village. The incubator plans to hold a Demo Day event on September 26th, where startups will unveil what they’ve been working on during the last six months.

The incubator started accepting applications for the second batch of the program yesterday. For startups that want to follow the example of PrimeAgain, now is a good time to apply.

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