According to Tech Crunch, Zynga are gearing up to effectively declare war on Facebook. My first thoughts on reading this were ‘talk about cutting your nose off’, but after a day or so to mull things over I think this could be very, very interesting.

There are two ways of looking at it – firstly, Zynga need Facebook for the simple reason that their games are so optimised for the simplistic, ‘click click click’ environment of the platform that they’re unlikely to succeed within any ’standard’ gaming environment. On the flip side, Facebook need Zynga because of the amount of money and traffic they push through the platform. Whether it be purchasing Facebook Ads to push users into their games (you’ll probably notice pretty much every page you view on Facebook has a Zynga game advertised) or helping keep users inside Facebook and helping them in their quest to take over the world.

What makes things even more interesting is that DST hold a (large) stake in both companies. If this does kick off the Russians will be stuck right in the middle which makes things even more enthralling.

So, what’s caused all this?

Facebook Credits.

Apple take 30% of any revenue from developers. Other mobile platforms take as much as 50%. Facebook want to bring this to the web and take their own slice of pie from game developers – again, to the tune of 30%. What’s even more concerning is the fact that they’re going to force anyone who wants to sell in-game currency to use Facebook Credits. And, even worse than that, the potential is there to ban all other monetization solutions (such as SuperRewards whom we have been working with since 2007). Not even Apple have done that.

If Facebook go ahead with this they’ll be sure to alienate a huge amount of developers and a mass exodus is almost certain to happen. On the one hand using Facebook Credits seems like a good idea (although the 30% is complete overkill and borders on taking the proverbial piss). Forcing developers to use them as a sole solution is, in my humble opinion, nothing short of anti-competition-monopoly-mongering.

The plus side, however, comes down to user perception. If players are able to top up their Facebook account and EASILY spend money inside any game that they play, chances are that engagement will increase. Click a button, get some extra credits, and know that they come from Facebook. The trust will be there, hopefully there’ll be a good level of customer service, and the overall experience should improve. Which, in theory, will be followed by higher spending.

What happens remains to be seen, but anyone involved – both from the inside and outside – will be watching very closely.

As everyone should know by now, Facebook recently launched an update to the homepage layout. How this will affect the virality of Applications remains to be seen but so far everything seems to be fairly consistent – we’ve noticed a 2-3% drop, but that’s nothing compared to what usually happens when Facebook post a major update.

The most interesting thing to come from all this has been user reaction. Because the roll-out has been staged over at least a week the new layout has reached different people at different times which has made for some interesting Facebook statuses. As always the general consensus seems to be contempt, dislike and horror. Personally I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

The new layout is just what it should be – clean, straightforward and easy to use. Moving bookmarks to the left hand side of the main page was an obvious thing to do, although no longer having easy access from the bottom left of the page is certainly going to take some getting used to. Added to that is the lack of ability to rearrange (which we’re told is to be fixed) and only 3 visible applications without clicking the ‘More’ button. Slightly annoying, but nothing major.

The ‘Dashboards’ are also a great addition and when fully rolled out have the potential to give users a single page from which to find games and applications, along with seeing updates from developers and friends alike. We’ve been testing the Dashboard API for a few weeks now and it’s relatively straightforward, although it should be noted that getting it to work does seem a little inconsistent at the moment.

So, why do users react badly to changes? The answer is simple: people don’t want to have to think about things. Facebook reaches such a large demographic and is used so much that even the slightest alteration is enough to kick start that “What the heck is this” feeling in a person. Give a few days and everyone’ll get used to things again. Until the next time.

What a great weekend – the most important happening being our visit to Buckingham Palace. Second to that, stopping in at the Tomorrows Web Conference to see what was going on and partake in the aftershow drinks was the perfect way to spend Saturday evening. Although we felt a little old (the conference was aimed at teens) it’s amazing how switched on and clued up on their business everyone is.

The most impressive was probably James Proud (@jamesproud on Twitter) who is about to launch giglocator.com. He won the startup of the day award and rightly so – it has potential to be a great service and one which should be hugely profitable and popular… I just hope it gets off the ground quickly and without too much tech pain.

Other than that, it’s been business as usual. Pet Pupz has its new code which means we can move onto the new layout and extra functionlity. At the same time we’re still working on the two massive projects that were started a couple of months ago… they’re taking time but so far things are looking good – they really have potential to take social gaming to a whole new level!

The Tomorrows Web Conference is a one-day gathering in Central London to discuss and learn about the future of the Internet and Technology industry. The conference is the first of its kind in the UK, and with over 9 hours worth of fantastic talks, panels and pitches.

Although Tomorrows Web is primarily aimed towards Teenagers in Technology, those who wish to be on the cutting edge of the industry, meet and chat with the very people who will be building the web in 10 years time, are more than welcome to attend.

At Hidden Pixel we firmly believe in supporting those who are up and coming in the world of technology, both in the UK and abroad. So, take a look at the web site -http://www.tomorrowswebconf.com/