AOL owned Bebo, today announced that following the beta launch of its new Social Games Experience (http://www.bebo.com/c/games) on October 15, games canvas page views grew by a total of 45%* and games installs grew by 54%*. Today marks the Experience’s official launch alongside leading developers such as Playfish and MindJolt, who have adopted Bebo’s Games Tools to create a more immersive and cohesive experience between games and the Bebo site and to further enhance interaction, engagement and game-play amongst the Bebo community.

Stephane Panier, President Bebo said: “Gaming activities continue to be one of the most absorbing online entertainment experiences and this area continues to explode in popularity. We want to create an engaging and fun environment and by providing our audience with a dedicated social gaming experience and developers access to the tools to make it as immersive as possible, we create an ecosystem that makes it easier for our audience to connect and express themselves around games.”

The Games Homepage anchors the Social Games Experience on Bebo and delivers a raft of new features to make gaming simple and easy. This dynamic page allows users to access social games applications; find out what the most addictive games are on Bebo; check out scores on the interactive leader board and receive recommendations. The new features are simple to use and understand, making it easy for users to engage and interact without a lot of clutter.

Specifically, Bebo is today announcing deployment of Games Homepage product features, which include:

• Challenge and Standing – users are able to challenge each other in real-time in three ways: via Bebo Messenger, from within the Games Homepage and In-Game. Challenge recipients who are online will receive immediate notification via an IM that will direct them to the game and allow them to engage with their friend within 2 clicks. Offline recipients will receive a challenge announcement in the Challenge and Standing module on the Games homepage, for them to connect with their challenger the next time they come to Bebo.

• Who’s Online – recognizes users’ desire to find people who are also online playing games and the ‘presence’ icon, powered by AOL Instant Messenger, denotes whether a user is idle, active etc.

• Games Updates – allow users to see which games their friends are adding and playing, and when they’ve received extra Bebo Luv.

• Leader board – dual leader boards allow users two different comparisons:

1.     Top Ranked (Friends) - allows users to easily see their friends’ scores and rankings and how they compare to them.

2.     Top Ranked (All Bebo) – allows users to see top ranking players from across the entire network.

In addition to the Games Homepage, a Games profile module can be added to the user’s personal profile. This mini-feed allows users to display their scores and achievements in the games that they have recently played and share their favorites. Inline commenting, the option to ‘talk smack’ and challenge users direct to their profile pages is also available. 

In order to make game development more efficient developers can choose from a simple menu of tools and integrate the functionality that makes sense for them, resulting in a more homogeneous user experience. 

"Playfish creates high quality innovative social games which are enjoyed by millions of people around the world," said Sebastien de Halleux, COO and Co-founder of Playfish.  "We’re thrilled that the new Social Games Experience will give millions of Bebo users a chance to play two of Playfish’s most popular games - Pet Society and Bowling Buddies - and an opportunity to connect, compete and socialize with their friends through them."

According to Richard Fields, Founder and CEO of MindJolt Games, the leading social networking gaming portal: “Bebo’s new Game Tools provide a cutting-edge level of integration between the Bebo site and the hundreds of games we provide.  We can now reach our players in a much more effective way than ever before, and have seen a dramatic increase in both engagement and new users.”

Bebo’s Social Games Experience will offer developers the following:

• Visibility in the Games Module on the User Profile Page
• Access to post to the Games feed on the Games Homepage
• Access to post to the global leaderboard on the Games Homepage
• Ability to send real-time challenges to users via Bebo Messenger
• Ability to send user-initiated challenge requests to online users via Bebo IM
• Set/get scores & ranks from Bebo’s global leaderboard, visible on the games homepage
• Get scores/ranks of similar users to help in challenge pairing and to render within applications
• Send user-initiated smack talk
• Show a users online presence in the Multi-friend selector & Multi-challenge selector

• See updated libraries for Java and PHP
• The ability to benefit from the popular Bebo ‘luv’ as means of reward

 For more information about Bebo’s Games Tools and to access integration examples, please visit - http://developer.bebo.com/games.html.