Trip Hawkins compares Facebook and Apple for social game monetisation

'The gap between social game revenue on Facebook versus Apple is shrinking...'

With many social games publishers now releasing games on iOS and Facebook, comparisons between the two platforms are inevitable. Digital Chocolate boss Trip Hawkins has just published a blog post digging into the subject.

Hawkins says Facebook has more of a social 'echo' to help games spread virally, but points out that Apple "has a gamer audience that tends to remember what they have downloaded in the last month and will not need reminders to return to those games on a regular basis, at least for awhile", as well as a popular store.

However, he warns that the echo on Facebook has declined in 2011, following a sharp fall in 2010. Hawkins measures this by comparing the Daily Active Users (DAU) total for a game with its Monthly Active Users (MAU) total.

"On Facebook, the leading games in 2009 had DAU-to-MAU ratios of as much as 40%, and a comparable game today is lucky to achieve 20%," he writes. "What it means is that if your marketing and virality bring 1 million new players in a day, back in 2009 perhaps 400,000 of them would be playing again the next day. Now it would be 200,000. At the same level of daily monetization you would bring in half the revenue."

On these grounds, Hawkins suggests that iOS social games revenues are catching up with Facebook, which may lead more social games publishers to shift emphasis towards mobile devices.