6 ms·

Candy Crush Monetization and Virality

11 points by TraustiThor 13y ago

tlarkworthy 13y ago
You missed an important viral driver. You can't play beyond level X without friend recommendations or paying for the privilege. That feature annoyed the hell out of me but its certainly been beneficial for the popularity of the game. I stopped playing it at that point
- TraustiThor 13y ago
  Ah, cool. Thanks for that pointer. I did not play that far.
smartician 13y ago
FYI, that page is being blocked by AVG Antivirus. It's detecting a "Blackhat SEO" threat.
- um304 13y ago
  Yes, I just saw "Exploit Blackhat SEO (type 1720)" by AVG and the browser refused to show anything.
  - TraustiThor 13y ago
    Hi, I just scanned it with: http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-reports/domain/traustikristjansson.info http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-reports/domain/t... and it came out clean after I removed those Viagara links. However, I'll go through and harden my wordpress setup.
davidpardo 13y ago
I don't know if it's on purpose, but there're a lot of spammy links in that page. I wouldn't visit.
- TraustiThor 13y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out! I found the spammy links in my wordpress header.php file and removed them. I don't know how they got there.
  - davidpardo 13y ago
    Works OK for me now. All in all, good post.
AlexeyBrin 13y ago
If you show the webpage source you'll see hidden divs that contains Viagra links and other things ... There are two possibilities: 1. OP website was hacked and he has no idea. 2. This page was purposely build with these SEO "enhancements" and the OP knows. I would love to hear an explanation from the OP about this :).
- TraustiThor 13y ago
  Hi, I am the owner of the website. I must have been hacked it here are spammy links! How do I get rid of them?
  - AlexeyBrin 13y ago
    It usually depends in what CMS your website is written (like WordPress, Drupal etc ...). You could also ask your web hosting provider if they can help you with cleaning up your website. Personally, I use a static website generator and I've never had any security problem. I can't give you any particular advice about how you can clean up your website, you could post a question on StackOverflow or do some Google searches once you know in what CMS your website is written. (From your page source code it seems that you are using WordPress, do some research about cleaning up an infected WordPress site. The first thing that comes to mind is to always keep your WordPress updated to the latest version ... this, however, won't help you now.)
    - TraustiThor 13y ago
      Thank you, I think it is ok for now. I found and removed the spammy links, and it passes http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-reports/domain/traustikristjansson.info http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-reports/domain/t... and it came out clean after I removed those Viagara links in header.php. I also upgraded to the newest version of wordpress and changed passwords. The hackers might have left a back door, so I will need to reinstall everything.
TraustiThor 13y ago
I found the spammy links in my header.php wordpress file and removed them. Apologies! I must have been hacked.
- krapp 13y ago
  Is your wordpress installation up to date?
  - TraustiThor 13y ago
    It is now...
    - krapp 13y ago
      You might find this worth looking at if you're not already aware. Good luck. You'll probably need it. http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Disable_the_Plugin_and_Theme_Editor http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Disable_the...
pstack 13y ago
I don't understand the popularity of Candy Crush. It's just a less complex variant of Bejeweled style games. Mobile gaming is littered with them. I played for the better part of an hour before hitting the eject button, but plenty of people in the gaming press are enamoured with and addicted to it. Hell, I even understood the popularity of Rovio's Artillary-like far more than this. It just goes to show that you don't need a good idea to be successful. Just throw enough dumb ideas to the wind and, eventually, something will sail.
- TraustiThor 13y ago
  I agree that the game itself is not really better than bejeweled or other similar games. It's the manipulative social strategies that they use to get people hooked and get people to spread the game to their friends that differentiates it from previous games. You can't argue with their success!

11 points by TraustiThor 13y ago

You missed an important viral driver. You can't play beyond level X without friend recommendations or paying for the privilege. That feature annoyed the hell out of me but its certainly been beneficial for the popularity of the game. I stopped playing it at that point

TraustiThor 13y ago
Ah, cool. Thanks for that pointer. I did not play that far.

smartician 13y ago

FYI, that page is being blocked by AVG Antivirus. It's detecting a "Blackhat SEO" threat.

um304 13y ago
Yes, I just saw "Exploit Blackhat SEO (type 1720)" by AVG and the browser refused to show anything.
- TraustiThor 13y ago
  Hi, I just scanned it with: http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-reports/domain/traustikristjansson.info http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-reports/domain/t... and it came out clean after I removed those Viagara links. However, I'll go through and harden my wordpress setup.

davidpardo 13y ago

I don't know if it's on purpose, but there're a lot of spammy links in that page. I wouldn't visit.

TraustiThor 13y ago
Thanks for pointing this out! I found the spammy links in my wordpress header.php file and removed them. I don't know how they got there.
- davidpardo 13y ago
  Works OK for me now. All in all, good post.

AlexeyBrin 13y ago

If you show the webpage source you'll see hidden divs that contains Viagra links and other things ... There are two possibilities: 1. OP website was hacked and he has no idea. 2. This page was purposely build with these SEO "enhancements" and the OP knows. I would love to hear an explanation from the OP about this :).

TraustiThor 13y ago
Hi, I am the owner of the website. I must have been hacked it here are spammy links! How do I get rid of them?
- AlexeyBrin 13y ago
  It usually depends in what CMS your website is written (like WordPress, Drupal etc ...). You could also ask your web hosting provider if they can help you with cleaning up your website. Personally, I use a static website generator and I've never had any security problem. I can't give you any particular advice about how you can clean up your website, you could post a question on StackOverflow or do some Google searches once you know in what CMS your website is written. (From your page source code it seems that you are using WordPress, do some research about cleaning up an infected WordPress site. The first thing that comes to mind is to always keep your WordPress updated to the latest version ... this, however, won't help you now.)
  - TraustiThor 13y ago
    Thank you, I think it is ok for now. I found and removed the spammy links, and it passes http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-reports/domain/traustikristjansson.info http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/website-safety-reports/domain/t... and it came out clean after I removed those Viagara links in header.php. I also upgraded to the newest version of wordpress and changed passwords. The hackers might have left a back door, so I will need to reinstall everything.

TraustiThor 13y ago

I found the spammy links in my header.php wordpress file and removed them. Apologies! I must have been hacked.

krapp 13y ago
Is your wordpress installation up to date?
- TraustiThor 13y ago
  It is now...
  - krapp 13y ago
    You might find this worth looking at if you're not already aware. Good luck. You'll probably need it. http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Disable_the_Plugin_and_Theme_Editor http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Disable_the...

pstack 13y ago

I don't understand the popularity of Candy Crush. It's just a less complex variant of Bejeweled style games. Mobile gaming is littered with them. I played for the better part of an hour before hitting the eject button, but plenty of people in the gaming press are enamoured with and addicted to it. Hell, I even understood the popularity of Rovio's Artillary-like far more than this. It just goes to show that you don't need a good idea to be successful. Just throw enough dumb ideas to the wind and, eventually, something will sail.

TraustiThor 13y ago
I agree that the game itself is not really better than bejeweled or other similar games. It's the manipulative social strategies that they use to get people hooked and get people to spread the game to their friends that differentiates it from previous games. You can't argue with their success!