I’m not talking about a downloadable installed client software using Internet Protocol, which however is a proven successful business model raking in millions, but instead speaking of games played in a web browser (mobile or not) and specifically how that co-relates to web 2.0’s emphasis on “social”. Too many investments have gone into companies that focus on the quantity of eyeballs using a web site vs. the value the people behind those eyeballs actually get from using it.

It’s my opinion that in the long run you need to have value from the get go otherwise the crowd defines your business, which could leave you with nothing in the end (there are exceptions like Google, however, exceptions are not the norm).

Defining Value is Simple

Take Amazon.com for example. It’s a site that I can use to “buy things”. ebay is a site that I can use to “sell things” (although with much pain and high prices now). But what would you say sites like LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook allow you to do in very few words? They are sites that I can “communicate with others” or “find others”, or are they more than that?

Now, not everyone wants 100 friends to communicate with, but, given the opportunity to play games with those 100 people and now you have a site whose value is one where you can can “play games”. So, unsubscribe right now to the hype companies or blogs are boasting about as to their X number of members/users because it doesn’t mean squat unless there is true value behind those numbers.

Why Gaming is a Proven Value for the Social Web

It’s all about “attention”. We’ve gone from “hits” in the early days of the web to “page views” to “unique users”.  Now we should be phasing out the current standard “qty of registered users” and phasing in “attention”. This is simply the quantity of time a user spends on your site. Now, if you have a high quantity of members and a high attention, then WHAMO! There’s value somewhere, focus on that value and make it grow and grow and grow. This is where Facebook’s growth should be focused, now feed it Zukerberg.

How does a social site feed attention?

Simply, games! From compete.com’s recent analysis on the top leaders of attention, 50% of them were either games or had some aspect of gaming involved. It’s a shame it’s taken this long for web 2.0 venture capitalist to wake up to this fact.

An analogy to the growth of the PC

Looking at the time frame of 1985 to 1995 I would venture to say, but have nothing to link to as proof that the major reason for PC adoption outside of business use was in fact games on the PC. So, one could easily look at the current growth of the social web and identify who is going to be big players in this space, be it on a PC or other device is doesn’t matter because they are serving up html over http.

In Summary

The semantic web is coined “web 3.0″, and it seems “web 2.5″ is all about data portability, so I’m left with “web 2.9″, and it’s here now in it’s infancy. All it will take is for a good combination of a “gaming platform” and “games” on that platform for widespread growth like the Wii has had. Right now, it’s either the platform that’s great, or the games, but I haven’t seen both under one roof just yet. Will Facebook be the first, doof.com, cafe.com? Have fun playing and developing and no I don’t work for Facebook but I am currently focused on building a Facebook application.