In the second part of InterGame’s Coin-op and the Internet series, here we look at the role of social media and how the industry is getting to grips with the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
THIS year, Facebook is 10 years old. It’s been a decade since founder Mark Zuckerberg launched the site, originally intended to be a social networking site for his fellow Harvard students, and seemingly changed the online landscape overnight. Does anyone use Myspace any more? Facebook is now a publicly listed company worth – on paper at least – billions. Yet, its value has raised questions about its commercial viability. Sure, it has 1.3 billion active users – a number close to that of, say, China’s total population – but how can this be monetised? And, what would happen if, overnight, everybody just stopped using it?
Then there’s Twitter, the site launched in 2006 that limits messages to 140 characters and is now among the top 10 visited internet sites and boasts 645 million users. Twitter is not only changing the way people communicate, but the way consumers engage with businesses. Within seconds, a message can be viewed by millions of people, whether you’re acquainted with them directly or not. Similarly, Pinterest and Instagram have created a new way of succinctly presenting information and images to the world.
But it can be a minefield, this social media. The news is littered with errors in judgement from celebrities and politicians, either directly because of social media or through information disseminated by it. From a commercial standpoint, getting the message wrong can be hugely costly. Equally, the rewards for getting it right can be enormous. For the pay-to-play amusement industry, social media offers an opportunity to broaden its base and engage with both operators and players that has never really existed before. Yet, arguably, the industry has yet to even scratch the surface.
Sega Amusements has been building its social media strategy over the past two-and-a-half years, utilising Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Read the full article in the March issue of InterGame
