Hey, this is the Daily Overpass. My name is Eric and I make apps. Now today, let's talk
about monetization for the Instant Games on Facebook Messenger.
So every year, I watch Google I/O, I watch WWDC and they always come out with their new announcements, the new
platforms and everything like that and it's always really, really fascinating. But then
you get to the point of how can I use this and how can I use money from it. And an example
is Google Assistant, the little speaker, this is one of the things I would love to code
something for it, but everytime I start looking at it, I have no idea on monetization
options. It might be fun as a hobby or something like that or maybe, to build some notoriety,
but I don't know. It's not enough to invest in learning the technology if I don't understand
how it's gonna - how it's gonna benefit in the long run. Is it gonna be a business or is it gonna be
a hobby? A lot of things are like that. If I owned like a pizza chain, if I own Pizza
Hut or if I work at Pizza Hut, then it would make sense, then I can built something where
people could order pizza and that's the revenue stream. But if you don't have that backend
revenue stream and monetization is what we think all the time. And this is one of the
great things about apps. This is why I work with apps to begin with is because we have
the in-app purchases, you have those very quick purchasing decisions, you also have
advertising, everything like that. So, last week Facebook had a post on their website,
on the Messenger website saying that they're bringing new source of monetization
options for their Instant Games on Messenger. Instant Games are - if you ever use Facebook
Messenger, more, more people are using it all the time now, if you go into the little
corner there, you can see the little game icon and they started out for like for 20 games and the
list is growing. And what they announced last week was they gonna start with rewarded ads
and interstitial ads and they just starting on the beta for in-app purchases. Which is actually
a really big news because it answers a lot of questions, you know, why would I do this?
And also - so, when I see something like this I start looking at the phaser framework, looking
at HTML5 games, which I've looked at before in terms of using PhoneGap and stuff like
that. But we just -it always just seems so slow to me. And I know these things are improving
all the time. But when I saw this article I thought, this could be - this could be something
in the future. But right now, it seems like it's a closed beta at the moment. I'll put
the link below so you can register for it and find out some information if you're interested,
but the fact that - what's Facebook has 2 billion users now, so, you know, whereas we
have Android, we have iPhone, Facebook is across platform - entity on its own. And everybody
is on Facebook and more and more are using Messenger. In fact, if you go to our website,
you go to the top banner, we used to have a MailChimp Newsletter sign up but now we
the - what it is called - the ManyChat Facebook Messenger thing. If you go in, register there,
you'll have like basically RSS feeds, so everytime we post a video or an article, stuff like
that, you get notified on your Messenger. Which might be a little bit more annoying.
We are just trying it out. Messenger as a platform is becoming more and more important.
Now I'm not - at the moment I'm not gonna do anything with this. This is something I'm
just gonna keep my eye on. Like I'm might go in it but I might be testing it out because,
to be honest with you, I have never played a game on Messenger. But I know loads of people
who have. It's a perfect, you know, multi-player type of thing. But when I looked at it, I
was thinking, you know, the search- how would the search work, how would the algorithms
work, how would the ads work and all this kind of stuff? But it's something definitely
to keep in mind.This could be the future. This could be - a year from now or two years
from now, a lot of us who are in android games or in iPhone games and to left Windows games
or whatever, that this is something we might be interested in. This might be another revenue
stream. It's so nice to have somebody say, "Okay, this is how you can make money from
it." And this is the reason to go ahead and do it. So, I think we're gonna see a lot of
growth in that area. Anyway, let me know what you, guys, think. First of all, have you done
anything with Facebook games? How have you monetized it in the past? Is it something
that you coincided with your apps and everything like that? And is it something that's - is
it something that you're interested in? Because it's something that I'm kinda excited about.
I think it's great. But nothing I'm gonna act just yet. But anyway, that's it for today.
Don't forget to like and subscribe, blah, blah, blah, and all that kind of stuff. That's
it for today. I'll talk to you, guys, tomorrow.