If virtual worlds are, even according to a recent research by Earnst & Young, a low-growing niche in the landscape world wide web, the success of social networks and social game continues as it is likely that a future stock exchange listing is on Facebook (arrived now to a theoretical valuation of $ 50 billion) and Zynga, the maker of games such as Farmville, Cityville or Mafia Wars to name a few of the best known.
Along with the growth of the players, according to eMarketer.com nowover 53 million in the U.S. alone, representing 24% of U.S. Internet users, as mentioned Paidcontent.org, grow revenues, last year amounted to 856 million dollars and designed to meet the 1.3 billion dollars by 2012 (always in the U.S. alone, when 68.7 million people are using social game), most (60%) thanks to the sale of digital goods (clothing, weapons, land, farms and etc. with which to improve their ability to play and customize their avatars).

Together with the exchange of digital goods (seen in 2012 to 792 million dollars in the field of social game in the U.S. market) increases the weight of advertising (which anywhere in the U.S. alone has now reached $ 25 billion) and 120 million spent last year (14.1% of the total turnover of the social game in the U.S.) is expected to increase to 271 million (20.5% of total) within a couple of years.
These numbers have to be verified both with regard to the accuracy of the forecasts, as the risk that the "bubble" explode like Second Life and virtual worlds (which is now universally considered doomed to remain a niche phenomenon for many years) is high, both with regard to the evolution of the phenomenon in other countries such as Italy, where there is also a growing number of people who play every day at social games, perhaps through Facebook, but where there is perhaps less rapid revenue growth tied to this phenomenon, both in the sales of digital goods, both for advertising.