Social gaming network PapayaMobile and the value exchange-based mobile ad network Tapjoy are today announcing a partnership that will combine the power of their two communities to help Android users better discover new mobile games. The jointly developed product will be called “Social Marketplace” and it will serve to recommend new games to mobile users based on their popularity among a user’s Papaya friends. In turn, developers will be able to better target consumers with more relevant ads, which means increased opportunity for engagement and monetization.
For background, Tapjoy rewards mobile users who install apps with virtual currency they can use within their favorite mobile games. The company’s Personal App Marketplace, which offers customized app recommendations based on user interests, came online earlier this month at www.tapjoy.com (that is, when accessed from a mobile browser).
The new Social Marketplace will be a dedicated product feature that’s visible within Tapjoy’s Marketplace. When Android users visit the Social Marketplace, they’ll be able to pick out the games being played by their Papaya friends and then download those apps so they can play, too.
This new feature isn’t live yet, but will arrive for developers by year-end, the companies say. It will be enabled only for those developers who integrate both the Papaya Social SDK and the Tapjoy SDK into their mobile applications. However, it should be noted that the Papaya Social SDK works to generate its recommendations based on anonymous user data in an effort to protect consumer privacy. In other words, it doesn’t necessarily show you who’s playing a given game, but it will show which games are currently “hot” on Papaya. (See this screenshot for a close-up example of how this will look).
Additional information and sign-up details will be made available on both companies’ websites:Â papayamobile.com and tapjoy.com.