14 DAY TRIAL // Apps and games in particular have proven hugely popular on Facebook. In turn, they helped the site grow larger and made people come back more often and stay longer.
But, even with notifications and various other methods of viral spread available to developers, games and apps have always been relegated to their own pages, a somewhat separated experience.
Not anymore, Facebook is now making it possible for games to live inside posts, so inside the news feed.
The idea is not to have the full games play in the news feed, but to give the possibility of trying it out there and then going to its proper location if you like it.
It's a very good idea for very obvious reasons. For one, any post containing an actual game will stand out and get a lot more attention than one with a link or even a snapshot of the game.
Second, it's going to get people to try it out more often since it only takes a click and doesn't disturb whatever it is they were doing before. Leaving the feed to go somewhere else is a large hassle if you're not particularly convinced you want to go there.
"We’re launching the ability for people to try games directly in news feed. Feed gaming enables developers to share a playable version of their game within news feed and timeline stories, reaching new users through some of our main distribution channels," Facebook explained.
"With feed gaming, you can include a short sample of your game in the stories people share from your game that friends can play in line with just a click," it said.
Note that you can't publish an entire game, it has to be a demo version of sorts, if only because you won't be able to get any data from users, so you can't save their progress. But this has the benefit of pushing people to go to the full version if they want to play.