Virtual Goods News

e more details like in-game status, invites for multiplayer sessions, when users have made an in-game purchase, in-game profile updates, or even when they've performed an in-game achievement. Gomila believes this will make the Viral API complimentary to the new Heyzap Analytics feature, which offers developers immediate feedback about user engagement within their games.

Heyzap Analytics currently reports to developers about total number of unique players, total number of plays, session length, and eCPM rates. The data can be refined to offer reports of performance specific to a particular domain that hosts a game, or can aggregate performance across all domains where the game is available. With Analytics and the Viral API together, Gomila believes developers could tweak in-game performance to enhance virality and drive monetization in games using Heyzap's in-game microtransaction platform. 

Social Data And Virtual Goods

Gomila says that driving virality in Flash games will have an immediate payoff for Flash games that are offering virtual goods and other microtransactions for purchase. Beyond the simple mathematics of more plays offering more chances for purchase, Gomila believes that developers could use viral techniques to make a newly-added virtual good of premium feature "go viral". Tweets or Facebook shares about a virtual item could inspire more purchases, directly increasing conversion.

In a broader sense, Gomila believes that the Viral API and Analytics in tandem could begin to increase user retention. Churn is a major issue for Flash developers, but viral techniques call for a player to invest more of their social identity in a given game. Once players make that investment and have in-game social profiles, they'll come back to play more often in the future. An invested player is more likely to be interested in b