Mobile Corner: A quick intro and a pet peeve

Sitting here with writers block (watching Coming to America probably isn’t helping) I figured that perhaps the best way to start my first WOOTcomms post was to give you, dear reader, a quick introduction about me. My name is Sam, and like Al and Mike I work in the world of advertising and marketing. My role in this world has a community management and social media focus, although I by no means consider myself an expert. If anything I love learning about the latest developments and hearing as many different opinions as possible.

Like Al and Mike I have a huge passion for gaming and have grown up with them around me. I still have a soft spot for the arcade but I especially love being involved in the newest developments in gaming. Because of this I have naturally gravitated to mobile gaming and have a ridiculous amount of mobile apps, I just cannot resist downloading the latest mobile game. I think it is important to support mobile devs of games and apps as these guys and girls are shaping the future of mobile tech.

Because of this I have been asked by the guys to write posts with a mobile skew. Hopefully some of you will find my thoughts of interest. So without meaning to take a deliberately negative twist to my first post I figured I should highlight something that has been consistently bothering me in some mobile games lately, without pointing the finger at the perpetrators. If you are going to use some form of social networking connectivity, do it properly. I have noticed some games of late have very strange uses of people’s social networking connections. Here are three examples of bad practice:

1) False Facebook Connect: I have seen this happen in a few apps, the use of Facebook connect appears to not use any Facebook features once you have signed in. Surely if you are going to use Facebook connect you should at the very least request that the player posts one update about your game? Or shows a leader board of friends who play the game? The basics people.

2) Spammalot: One quick way to get yourself a bad reputation is to force a player to spam their friends and followers with updates about your game. Give your players the option to post, never force them to. Those who then do put up posts will mean stronger connections to an audience who are more likely to want to play your game also.

3) Data grabbing: Requiring a player to connect to a social network just to grab their email or access wider data to send them spam or use that info for your own gain is the biggest sin. Bad reputation, stream of angry complaints and an app dead in the water before it has even had a time to go anywhere will follow.

Social networks, no matter what platform, are incredibly important ways to get word of mouth marketing running for your application if implemented properly. Poor implementation just makes your app frustrating to use and makes you as a developer look lazy.

In my next post I will highlight some of the best implementations that I have seen and used. But in the mean time what are your pet peeves in mobile? Seen any other bad practices with social implementation? Discuss and share in the comments below.