Dimoso's CEO and Founder, Jacki Vause, highlights how social networks are transforming mobile gaming, with platforms like Gameram enabling gamers to connect and build vibrant communities.

Social networks come in all shapes and forms: we are all connected on social networks, and we fundamentally understand the driving forces behind them and their value to marketers. Just like games, social networks are evolving. The next generation of players is looking for new ways to connect, consigning platforms like Facebook and Instagram to the older generations. We have seen TikTok rise to dominance by enabling people (predominantly younger users) to express themselves through UGC. More significantly, UGC creation around passion centers has become an accepted and valued way of socializing within communities.

For developers of casual games, building a community around their game has always been a challenge—it’s expensive in both time and money. It’s also a completely different skill set, and, after all, who wants to socialize around a casual game?

You’d be surprised! Gameram has seen firsthand the organic communities that build around popular games. Never has “if you build it, they will come” been a truer maxim: Gameram is a new kind of social network, a platform where gamers meet new friends and teammates to discuss their favourite games, play together, and share all kinds of gaming experiences. Gameram cultivates community engagement within the mobile mid-core and casual gaming sectors, and with a current user base of 500,000 monthly active users, Gameram is rapidly growing.

This growth can be attributed, in part, to living in an age of disconnection and loneliness; gaming has become a new way of connecting. Sometimes, gaming buddies can grow into something more personal, and Gameram’s players connect based on their shared interest in one thing only—gaming. This connection is fostered through sharing content such as screenshots, videos, fan art, and more.

Socialization in games is much underestimated, yet it has a significant positive impact on mid-term and long-term player retention and monetization. It also brings a new, efficient way of user acquisition. Previously, when acquiring users in a broad social network like Facebook, you’d achieve a low k-factor (calculated by multiplying the average number of invites or referrals per user by the average conversion rate for referred users). This is because individual users would only recommend a game to their friends in closed groups or in person.

A games-centric social network is a fundamentally different proposition for UA, with “tribes” of fanatical and engaged users. Targeting players on gaming social networks can yield a low-cost, high-value return: according to Newzoo, socialized players demonstrate a 2% increase in spending and a 9% increase in gameplay.

Within a gaming social network, these highly engaged players become creators themselves, freely sharing their UGC within the network and motivating friends to try new games they’ve discovered. A recent Google Mobile Insights report indicated that 34% of players discover new games through recommendations from friends and family. Typically, the more UGC created inside a gaming network, the more attention a game will get, driving more organic installs as a result.

Then there is the added benefit of seeing your own community build organically around your game. Gameram bridges the gap between community socialization and gameplay by offering accessible content creation tools, an algorithm that encourages community engagement, and a global community of like-minded individuals with similar gaming interests.

When done right, tapping into a games-centric social network becomes a powerful virtuous cycle: you can gain installs through a highly efficient UA campaign and then watch as new players share their enthusiasm by creating their own UGC, which they share, in turn, with their tribes on the very network you used to find them. And the cherry on top? An organic, passionate, self-sustaining community devoted to your game, one you can connect with to derive insights that fuel even better games.