It is often said that if Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest country in terms of population behind China and India. For a country of this size, it is but natural to have a currency of its own. No wonder, Facebook Credits are fast becoming the dollar equivalent in the virtual world.
The new world economy
Facebook Credits are a virtual currency that users can use to buy virtual goods in many games and apps on the Facebook platform. Currently users can use Facebook Credits to purchase premium items in popular games and apps like CityVille, FarmVille, Cafe World, EA Sports FIFA Superstars etc.
The new banking system
You can purchase Facebook Credits using your credit card, PayPal, or a mobile phone. The Facebook Games Dashboards displays your available balance. You can directly purchase credits from the dashboards also. A lot of games also have the option to let you purchase directly.
The goal with Facebook Credits is to give people that use Facebook an easy, convenient and trusted way to buy premium items in games and applications, while creating unique opportunities for developers to build successful, sustainable businesses. Facebook Credits are now used in more than 200 games and applications on Facebook from more than 75 developers.
The global impact
What this means is, with more than 500,000 applications on Facebook, and millions of virtual goods within those applications (particularly games), applications have become an increasingly valuable part of the user experience. And Facebook Credits is the currency that makes purchasing these virtual items across applications possible in a fast and simple manner.
Generally it’s free to play the games on Facebook but users can get ahead if they pump in actual money to buy virtual goods. With 200 million people playing games on Facebook every month, according to the site’s own figures, it only takes a small proportion of paying customers to generate healthy revenue.
With the likes of Zynga, the biggest social game company and developers of Cityville and Farmville, signing to deal in Facebook Credits in their games, it has cemented Facebook Credits economic strength. Industry estimates say that Zynga has brought in between $500 million to $700 million in revenue this year from the sale of virtual goods. That is a lot of money spent in a virtual world. And if Zynga is to make Facebook Credits as its official currency for these games, Facebook Credits can soon become the desired currency world over.
Emerging Trend
This has already led to Facebook Credits debuting in real world. Facebook began selling Facebook Credit gift cards at Target stores earlier this year, but with the holiday season approaching, it decided to land on the shelves of WalMart and Best Buy. Facebook Credits have been on store shelves from September 2010 and were ranked as one of the most desired holiday seasons gift.
Opportunity for engagement
With more and more people spending time on these games and purchasing virtual world gifts using the Facebook Credits, this could be good bait for brands to attract more fans to their pages. It is a given fact that a lot of people join brand pages for deals and offers. A lot of them join in order to win the contest run by these brands. While they are on these pages, these users are more active on the social games. With their favourite brands giving Facebook Credits as gifts for various contests that run on these brand pages will only make them more loyal fans of the page.
(source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/study-reveals-why-consumers-fan-facebook-pages/)
Not only that, with Facebook Credits easily becoming available for users, brands can look at adopting FB Credits as a viable ecommerce solution on Facebook. Though this system is not yet in place, a real world and a virtual world economy tie up cannot be ruled out. Knowing that a certain amount of FB Credits are worth a specific amount, the same conversion can be used to sell real products through Facebook.
The idea may sound radical but the growth of Facebook has lead to many changes in the brick and mortar structure of our society. More and more people are becoming citizens of the Facebook country. It is not just an imagination that soon there would be a virtual world with real transactions happening with Facebook Credits.