Why Facebook is dependent on Zynga, not the other way round

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2009 was the year in which Facebook trounced MySpace.

Rupert Murdoch’s magical acquisition has been losing its lustre for a while. But, perhaps surprisingly, the main driver of Facebook’s success may have been games.

Two reports just released show the process graphically. But first, let’s have a look at Facebook’s phenomenal growth, up to their announcement in December 2009 that they had reached 350 million monthly users.

The first report is ComScore’s “The 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review”, which shows how Facebook is comprehensively beating MySpace in the US.

There are any number of reasons why Facebook is beating MySpace. But I think that the reason is simple.

Games.

PopCap has just released a market research survey based on social games. If you are interested in games on Facebook, you *must* get this research (Full PDF here).

Really. Go get it.

But in the meantime, here are some of the key findings:

• The average age of a social gamer is 43
• 31% of social gamers don’t play any other games
• 44% of social gamers have only started playing those games in the last year
• 95% of them play games every week; 30% play every day
• 49% of them log in to social networks specifically to play games.

That last bullet is a very big number. Half of all social gamers log in to a social network in order to play a game.

A few years ago, Facebook’s commercial challenge was to create something sufficiently compelling to make someone log in every day. Rather than trying to come up with it themselves, they opened up their platform, let developers experiment and discovered something they probably would never have thought of:

• Middle aged social network users are avid gamers

It’s true. 62% of all social gamers are age 30-60. But it doesn’t explain Facebook’s dominance yet. Until we see where people go to game.

Oh dear, MySpace. 83% of gamers play on Facebook. MySpace is used by only one third as many people.

There’s a bunch of different possible reasons. Some of them might be:

• MySpace skews younger, and younger gamers might be more likely to game on console, handheld or mobile
• Facebook’s platform may just be more developer friendly than MySpace’s
• MySpace is about self-expression; Facebook is about connecting with friends. That makes the social aspect of gaming more suited to Facebook.

But in the end, I conclude that Facebook *needs* its gaming partners like Playfish and Zynga. They have been the engine of growth, stickiness and MySpace-beating throughout 2009.

So investors, I’m not sure I would be worried about Zynga’s reliance on Facebook. I’d worry about Facebook’s dependence on Zynga.

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