Altyrian View

So Twitter wasn”t the biggest social app in 2009. It was Farmville, boasting 69 million active users. Yes, that Farmville – the one with the “Bill has found a lost cow. Click to adopt it.” status updates in Facebook.

TECHDIGEST compares Farmville to SecondLife”s “long lost cousin.” Like Second Life, the creators of Farmville got obscene amounts of money (a $200 million investment), but it is just another fad? To be fair, the investment wasn”t necessarily for the development of Farmville but for a host of new games that the developers wants to get us to play.

As you know, the biggest challenge of games like this is figuring out a way to make money. Of course, there is the ad revenue from the page views associated with playing the online game, but I”m sure that the developers would prefer a more direct form of cash flow. I happen to play Farmville (level 70, thank you very much), and I have yet to pay real money to buy virtual farm dollars – even if those farm dollars are needed to get my final blue ribbon.

What Farmville”s growth does show us is that there is a desire to play games online (duh) and that people like the social interactions afforded from games like Farmville. Is Farmville the end? No. Just like Second Life, it is merely a precursor to future development.

Today, Apple changed the advertising world. In an update about the new iPhone software, Steve Jobs introduced iAd.

The best way to describe iAd is to think about Google Adwords and changing it to work within iPhone applications – the entire system is run by Apple with the proceeds going to Apple (40%) and application developers (60%).

Of course, for developers, this is big news, but for advertisers and media buying services agencies, this is huge – a real game-changer. Assuming that Apple allows it, we will be able to target customers based on location and preferences. For example, if you are a store in a mall, you have the potential to be able to advertise your store once someone sets foot in the mall (to be fair, we don”t know yet if iAd will have those capabilities). In short, this turns the whole idea of mobile advertising on its ear.

If you”ve been reading the news, it”s obvious that Apple and Google have started to clash. This can”t do much for that relationship. What it will do is create another advertising outlet that allows us targeting that has only been available on the Web.