Game Design Secrets

Twitter: A Blue Ocean of Opportunity on the Web

Hyatt believes Twitter remains a great—if unexploited—opportunity for promoting and interacting with some specific types of games on the web. For example, he notes that much of Draw Something’s growth was fueled by drawings posted and shared on Twitter. (See Figure 10-3.)

Figure 10-3: Draw Something shared on Twitter via @wedrawsomething

Consider a look at Blue Ocean Strategy, the influential book by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, which argues that businesses should expand in an uncontested market space.

“[W]e have yet to see those [Twitter-integrated] games, though Draw Something is a hit in that direction,” Hyatt says. For that reason, Twitter, which continues to grow in user numbers and engagement levels, remains a “blue ocean” of opportunity that has hardly been explored. Not only does it currently attract nearly 175 million monthly visitors (according to Google Ad Planner), but also its content is not walled off or stove-piped as Facebook’s is.

With that in mind, let me add a thought experiment here—if the Pictionary-like Draw Something can go viral through image sharing, why can’t a Mad Libs–like web game go viral through text sharing on Twitter? Also keep in mind other social networks beyond Twitter, such as China’s huge Sina Weibo (300 million users) and mobile social apps, like Foursquare, which could emerge as ...