Almost everybody knows that the British economy has been affected tremendously by the recession. They also continue to have a hard time getting back on their feet. Unexpectedly, one of the things that are helping this economy is the unprecedented growth of mobile phone and social networking apps.
Facebook is one of those social networking sites that help the British economy. How? Facebook is open to third party developers. So people who are not working for the social networking site can create applications that will be used for there. The apps are free to use but the developers profit from this through online purchases of their gaming items and currency. Currently, the site is probably the best gaming platform for 2009. This is due to the fact that they have approximately 350 million users worldwide and about one fifth of the users play online games.
The British company, Playfish, is one of the third party developers who create apps for the social networking site. They have been made famous by developing games like “Restaurant City”, “Country Story”, “World Challenge”, “Crazy Planets”, and “Bowling Buddies”. However, its most famous Facebook apps are “Pet Society” and “Who has the Biggest Brain?”. In November, they profited $275 million or £172 million when the Electronic Arts, a big videogame company, acquired them.
Another British company, Mind Candy, became very popular worldwide with their Facebook app, Moshi Monsters. Recently, they have gained about 16,000 monthly active Facebook users. This game allows players to adopt their very own pet monster.
Profit from these apps may reach $1 billion before the year ends. This number is expected to balloon up to $1.6 billion next year. The British will definitely have a part of this huge profit.
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