Facebook testing game promotion through notifications

Facebook is testing a new feature designed to help users discover and re-engage with social games on its site, by alerting them about apps their friends are interacting with through notifications. The social network has rolled out a number of new features meant to encourage app discovery recently, such as its App Center marketplace for online and mobile titles, and allowing developers to embed their games into users' news feeds. This new feature is even more visible than a news feed update, though, as it pops up an alert at the top of users' screen when they access Facebook, no matter what page they're viewing on the site. "We are testing this feature as part of ongoing tests to help people discover and re-engage with apps and games and drive meaningful traffic to developers," said a representative from the company, according to a report from Inside Facebook. While many developers will likely appreciate another viral channel to acquire and re-engage players through, Facebook users have complained in the past about spam messages from social games that pop up in their news feeds even though they're not interested in them. Facebook responded to those complaints before by limiting how apps could interact with users' news feeds, which resulted in many of the site's top social games losing tens of millions of users.