The exciting thing about the emerging social games space (think Facebook applications) is that these new games don't have to follow the same structures and design blueprints of existing video games. Indeed, some of the most successful - Friends For Sale or Fluff Friends for example - aren't 'games' in the traditionally understood sense. Another Facebook hit in this vein is Human Pets, which lets people have, yes, humans as pets.
Anyway, the Facebook version is installed on more than 1.5 million profiles, although that’s currently only generating 30,000 daily active users, implying it may not be quite as sticky as some of its rivals.
However, the company behind it has taken the next step, launching a standalone Human Pets virtual world. It’s based on the same concept though: users have their own avatar as a virtual pet, while playing games and participating in chatrooms and auctions.
Interestingly, the company says Human Pets is as much a dating service as a game. “Human Pets is all about meeting new people online in a fun way,” says founder Patrick Shyu in the press announcement, which also boasts of 20 couples who’ve got engaged or married after meeting through the Facebook app. The new standalone site signed up 15,000 users during its beta test, apparently.
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