taken its game inventory to Facebook, which Blacklow says is the “hottest, sexiest piece of the business.” Its crop of 50-plus games on Facebook skyrocketed in 2010, growing from 1 million monthly users to nearly 7 million monthly active users over the last six to nine months, says Blacklow.
The GSN Games app for Facebook includes games like Family Feud, as well as more classic Hasbro board game titles and the social game Dumbville. The games function around virtual currency, giving users a number of free tokens to start off and then requiring them to buy more to keep on playing. The company is also looking for celebrities to endorse several of its games for Facebook in the coming year. “If you can create a game around large celebrities and endorser figures, you can rise above the clutter of the 10,000 games apps,” Blacklow says.
“In 2009 it didn’t exist, in 2010 it’s set to generate couple million bucks,” Blacklow says of the Facebook business of GSN Digital. “It’s just on fire from a scale standpoint of consumers, and also the revenue is just taking off.”
The subsidiary is also looking to enter into the mobile arena in the coming year, and sees itself snapping up interesting gaming startups to add to its inventory, Blacklow says.
