YoVille almost at 8m?
Virtual Worlds News tallies the latest YoVille numbers and arrives at 7.8 million monthly uniques. This is by summing the MySpace and Facebook usage reported by GigaOM, which likely means that there’s overlap in users. But still — impressive monthly growth given that it was less than a month ago that I wondered if YoVille was bigger than WoW in North America.
While at GDC, I talked with a lot of folks about YoVille, and generally the comment was “but it’s just nto very good!” Unlike WoW’s dominance in the AAA MMORPG space, I do think that YoVille is vulnerable to competitors; the audience has been only lightly exposed to the variety and possibility that exists in VWs, so there’s a lot of potential for other experiences to come in and grab lots of users.
8 Responses to “YoVille almost at 8m?”
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Interesting, yeah? I couldn’t pin down the metrics for MySpace apps, so I’m not sure if 2.8 mill are active monthlies or just registrations or what. But Facebook is more specific about that, so to me that’s the more meaningful number.
Isn’t this kind of like saying 3 million unique players use XYZ UI mod in World of Warcraft? YoVille is nothing more than an add-on to Facebook/MySpace. We wouldn’t be talking about YoVille if the underlying product wasn’t there.
I’m just cautious about anything attached to a platform too intimately.
This would be why VCs value Facebook apps less than web products. 🙂 But YoVille IS a full world, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t live outside of Facebook.
…except for the whole “where would we get 7.8 million monthly uniques without a viral marketing platform?” thing. But I’m sure the Zynga team could figure that one out.
Now that they have the 7.8m, they could easily move over. 🙂
They’d lose a lot of them if it’s not accessible *through* Facebook/Myspace though, so they still need those sites to drive population growth. I mean, sure they can do what Metaplace does and go beyond simply living on those sites, but without them, they’re still not going to see that sort of population.
(On the other hand, this bodes really well for metaplace worlds since the API works nicely for Facebook and MySpace integration. I would not be suprised to see good Metaplace worlds hit these sorts of numbers if they’re distributed through Facebook links.)
How many of that 7.8m clicked in, looked around, and never came back? I’m one, my roommates make 3 more… God YoVille is the worst VW experience I’ve ever had. I couldn’t even find my friend who was on a computer RIGHT NEXT TO ME. Horrendous.
Some of the comments here make it sound like it’s not really impressive. I guess it depends to what you are comparing and what are your expectations.
I don’t know much about YoVille but if I compare to my own numbers of accounts created VS active players (around 2%, not sure if it’s any good for a free game…) and then check my revenue, they’d be making a bit over $100 000 a month.
I admit, that’s very amateurish calculation but on the other hand, I’m only comparing to my very humble stats so they’re probably making more than that. I don’t know anything about the company behind YoVille but that might not be that bad…
Saying they wouldn’t exist if Facebook wouldn’t exist is like saying Runescape wouldn’t exist if the web wouldn’t exist. Of course, maybe… But that’s not “yet” the case… When you get that far, you’re probably able to take actions to back you up?