With over 500 million users, Facebook is one of the largest online communities in the world. It's also one of the leading platforms for social gaming online, an activity that has 56 million users logging on the net on a daily basis. This market is growing rapidly enough to have pushed online gaming past personal email to become the second most popular activity online.

Advertisers in the US are already taking advantage of this. Online retailers offer virtual currency/goods along with every purchase made. Restaurants offer virtual currency for orders placed online during a certain hour. Virtual currency and products are finding favour with those who play online games. However, while gamers lap up free offers, gaming companies have found that only 3-4% of users are willing to pay for such virtual currency/products. While it's in that 3-4% that gaming companies like Zynga are profiting, the rest is still untapped potential.  

This potential's being tapped right now by Facebook, Target and Walmart; the two retail chains have tied up with the social networking site to provide Facebook credits, redeemable in games like Mafia Wars and Farmville for special items. And Zynga's 200 million monthly active users are expected to contribute to the profits that both Facebook and Walmart will see from the sale of these credits. Other retailers, restaurants and service providers are choosing to club these credits as offers on products, meals and services.  

India has a reported 81 million internet users, a figure that's predicted to rise, pushing it past Japan, which currently has the third highest number of users behind the US and China. A reported 41% of those users are online gamers. Facebook has beaten out the previous top social networking site, Orkut, with 20.9 million users as opposed to the latter's 19.9 million users in mid-2010.  

Even children are being introduced to online gaming early on, with Disney's Club Penguin-recently launched in India-Chimpoo, and Togetherville, all encouraging children to network with their peers around the world. These sites also provide the necessary tools for parents to track their child's activity; Togetherville even links the child's page with their parents' Facebook pages.