Virtual Goods: An important growth driver for Facebook

Forbes: "the virtual goods industry is expected to expand rapidly in the coming years"

Virtual Goods To Generate $2.9 Billion In 2012

Information Week: "Virtual goods have become the primary method of monetization for makers of social apps and games"

Virtual goods spending topped $2 billion in U.S. in 2011

USA Today: "Purchasing virtual goods is truly becoming a mainstream activity"

FUTURE OF SOCIAL GAMING: US Social Gaming Market Will Grow To $5 Billion+ By 2015

Business Insider: "We believe paying users will go from 4% to 10% of all players and average gross bookings per paying user will increase as well. "

Plimus Survey Finds Virtual Gifts Top Everyone's List This Valentine's Day

San Francisco Chronicle: "overall market for virtual goods in the United States is projected to reach $2.9 billion in 2012. This is an increase of $2.2 billion from 2011 and $1.6 billion from 2010. Sales of virtual goods have increased consistently year-over-year as virtual goods and services become more abundant and consumers' accessibility to them has become easier and more frictionless"

5 trends impacting Facebook's value

MSN Money: "Facebook generated around $557 million last year by selling virtual goods on its website"

5 questions about Facebook's IPO

Chicago Tribune Business: "In its regulatory filing, the company cited industry data projecting that the sale of virtual goods will generate worldwide revenue of $15 billion in 2014, compared with $7 billion in 2010."

Zynga’s Stock Rating Gets A Boost, And So Does Its Traffic

TechCrunch: "more than 230 MAU"

Katy Perry joins forces with The Sims

Washington Post: "themed in-game content and virtual goods"

Zynga Chief Talks IPO

The Wall Street Journal: "was on track for one of the hottest initial public offerings of 2011 ...Now he wants to show the hype was justified"

Zynga IPO opens at top of price range

Financial Times: "Stephanie Chang, analyst at Renaissance Capital: Zynga has a tangible revenue stream in place"

What To Expect From The Zynga IPO

San Francisco Chronicle: "earns 95% of its income from its $969 million in sales of virtual goods"

Paying for pixels

The Economist: "Turbine: LOTRO .. moved to [free2play] .. revenue .. tripled"

Real Money for Virtual Coin

technologyreview: "The research firm In-Stat projects that the global market for such goods will be over $14.6 billion by 2014, more than double its 2010 value"

Nexon will hold $1.3B IPO

Venturebeat: "Nexon in particular has pioneered the top business model of the day: free-to-play games where people play games for free and pay real money for virtual goods. It’s a growing business: Market researcher Strategy Analytics expects the virtual goods market to grow from $6.8 billion in 2011 to $12.7 billion in 2016."

Southeast Asian online game market expected to be worth $1 billion by 2015

Gamesbeat: "by 2015 .. effectively double the .. revenues [of] 2011"

Free-to-play transition brings seven-fold revenue increase for DC Universe Online

Gamesbeat: "53 percent of this revenue .. by ..console version"

Farmville' Makers Putting Stock In Virtual Goods

NPR: "Sam Hamadeh, CEO of PrivCo .. estimates Zynga is worth $5 billion, others say 20"

American Express Buys Virtual Currency Company for $30 Million

GamePro: "Virtual transactions in games rake in a staggering total of $7.3 billion globally. It's growing fast. It's only picked up steam as more and more companies are getting into the virtual currency market"

Social Virtual Goods Revenues Generated via Mobile Devices to Reach $3bn in 2011 Rising to $4.6bn in 2016

MarketWatch: "A new report from Juniper Research finds that soaring usage of social gaming -- driven largely by the sharp rise in smartphone adoption -- will push the global market for virtual goods bought from mobile social media services from $3 billion this year to $4.6 billion by 2016."

Four Reasons Why Virtual Goods Make Us Happy

Forbes: "eMarketer estimates that virtual goods revenues will reach $653 million in the U.S. this year, up 28% from 2010. Clearly, Americans are hungry for virtual goods."

Why World of Warcraft added Pokemon-like battling to Mists of Pandaria

Gamesbeat: "a one-day sale of a unique Celestial Steed mount netted the company over $2 million"

€1000 Virtual Item Raises €2 Million In 4 Days

Venturebeat: "Bigpoint, which operates a few free-to-play games, has sold 2000 (and counting) items just in the last few days – for the whopping price of €1000 each."

Sony redesigns PlayStation Home as a social gaming hub

Gamesbeat: "jumping on the big trend in online games: social games with free-to-play business models, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods"

U.S. virtual goods revenue on Facebook to grow 32 percent to $1.65B in 2012

Gamesbeat: " fast-growing virtual goods and social gaming industries that use it are maturing"

Sony's DC Universe Online now a 'freemium' game

Los Angeles Times: "The move comes as traditional multiplayer online games that charge monthly fees come under economic pressure from social games, which are initially free to play, but sell virtual goods"

Facebook is set to pass $4B in revenue this year, thanks to Credits

Socialbeat: "Since last year, the amount of money Facebook collects from Credits has more than tripled,"

Online game subscription revenue declines as sales of virtual goods rise

Los Angeles Times: "IHS expects revenue from microtransactions to exceed the amount collected from subscriptions ... Zynga alone booked more than $830 million in revenue primarily from microtransactions in 2010"

Diablo 3 Taps PayPal for Virtual Goods Payments

WebProNews: "our research has shown that over 70% of gamers are PayPal users"

Facebook is set to pass $4B in revenue this year, thanks to Credits

Socialbeat: "Since last year, the amount of money Facebook collects from Credits has more than tripled,"