Blizzard is working hard to add social features to Battle.net.

MAY 5, 2010 • Blizzard Ent. has long been interested in further promoting social interaction with players of it various titles via the studio’s Battle.net service – the new Real ID feature that better identifies friends, for example. What came as a surprise was the news that Battle.net would integrate with Facebook starting with StarCraft II. Players will be able to transfer Facebook friends to their Battle.net friends list. In related news, Blizzard announced that StarCraft II wold be completely localized in Latin America… with a catch. With their retail purchase, Latin Amercian players in Argentina, Chile and Mexico will have only six months of access to the single-player campaign and multiplayer play through the new version of Battle.net. Continued StarCraft II play beyond the time included with the initial purchase will be available via 30-day and 60-day subscription options. Pricing for these options were not announced.

Impact: There is no doubt that in terms of number of users and social interaction between users, Facebook is huge.  Facebook has become an important viral marketing tool for many types of products.  Companies like Zynga showed how Facebook could be used to rapidly build a product’s success.  So if a company wants to increase social interaction among players it makes sense to integrate with Facebook because they are already promoting that social interaction.  Also as we have noted in some of our reports, Facebook has had tremendous success in Latin America.  Countries like Argentina, Chile and Mexico have over 5 million Facebook users each.