Lovers Spurned #1 : Facebook & Apple

Earlier this month, Apple announced and showed off “deep integration” of Twitter in the new iOS 5. Meaning wherever an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch goes, Twitter is there - the hot new celeb couple in town!

News (and gosh leaked photos too) is circulating in the feeds showing Apple’s ex-lover to be none-other than Facebook – Twitter’s archrival. The circulating pictures of unreleased betas are showing that same “deep integration” with Facebook, exactly where Twitter is now. After all Facebook is the undisputed king of social media, many times larger than Twitter.

How did that Apple and Facebook relationship run into the rocks? Is it a clash of egos? Jealousy? Who ditched whom? Some say the cracks started with the Apple’s Ping social music network which was supposed to be a service with “iTunes on Facebook”. Some say it’s because of Facebook being in bed already with Microsoft in Windows Phone 7.

Whatever it is, Apple’s jumping straight into bed with arch rival Twitter is surely not making things smoother. So, skip the “let’s be friends” politeness, and get straight into the cat fight of spurned lovers. meowwrrrrrr.

Facebook attacking Apple with HTML5 App Store for iOS devices
Coming soon Facebook’s very own App Store for your iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch. Seriously. Currently the only way to get apps are through Apple’s iTunes Apps. Facebook is determined to break that monopoly and shift Apple users onto Facebook’s own ecosystem. The project is still in development, a pure coincidence that it is being leaked now, right after the leaks of the Apple-Facebook integration.

Apple Game Center in iOS 5 mirrors Facebook gaming
An amazing 53% of Facebook users play games on Facebook. Based on the latest numbers of 700m Facebook users, it means Facebook Games has more than 350m gamers! Far far ahead of the last September launched Apple Game Center with 50m subscribers. So to compete, Apple is launching new look and new features in iOS 5 that makes Game Center more like Facebook’s Games page!

Actions of a spurned lover? Or root of the break-up? Watch out. Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned.

Dumb and dumber is more numbers

Before you jump to conclusion, this post is not about the movie dumb and dumber, although it is in the field of entertainment – games, phone games, social games to be precise. We play games to entertain ourselves and sometimes to socialise – traditionally it would be a game of cards, chess, hide and seek, or even table tennis. That brings me to Pong, the forefather of electronic games. Since then computing power and hardware abilities has grown massively in one direction. Each new game machine delivered more, faster, higher def. With more processing power crunching more graphics, the games got more high definition, more realistic, more complex, more sensational. Games started to look and feel like Hollywood, and costs more to produce and even more to buy.

Well that is until Nintendo’s Wii came along a couple of years ago, totally reversing the trend. With less development resources and less money to risk, Nintendo could not take on Microsoft and Sony in the game of biggger badder hardware and epic game developments. Cleverly, Wii went back to the basics, simple, fun and enterta( ining. You don’t need to spend hours building up your character, or understanding the plot. Not only Pa and Ma can play, even Grandpa, Grandma and baby sis can play too! Now that´s numbers!

The runaway success of Wii has proven dumber is more numbers! More fun, simpler to play, more people can and will play.

So what’s next? What is dumber than Wii games… yup… phone games, social media games. Even shorter, even simpler, even more no-brainer so you can simply stop thinking and just play. Game over? Try again. Try again. I swear just one more time. The popularity of Angry Birds just knows no boundaries!

This is the article I came across last week that started me thinking about simple mindless games – Apple’s Game Center outnumbers Microsoft’s Xbox Live. Fact is, Apple’s Game Center (think iPhone/iPad app games) has hit 50m members in just NINE months, overtaking Xbox Live’s 35m members which has been running much longer. The picture used in this article is the introduction of Apple’s Game Center just September last year. 50m in just this 9 months!

iPhone/iPad games, Android games, Facebook games… even Skype has joined in with Skype game. I wonder what will a Twitter game look like (edit: hitting that ReTweet button 5ox a minute is NOT a game). The days of dumb and dumber games has just started. Well as the saying goes in marketing, Keep It Simple and Stupid. Watch the numbers grow!