By hiring a director of social media and starting a new Social Games Group to take on Zynga, the leader in social games, the e-tailing giant is trying to stake its claim in the social media space.

At the end of May I scribed a post titled The Big Opportunity Marketers Are Missing Right Now, a post which dealt directly with online social gaming and how a great deal of those playing online social games were women, the same women who are responsible for the majority of decisions made in a household. In that same post I told of a Forrester Survey which revealed 84% of companies surveyed had no plans to use online social games in their U.S. marketing strategies in the next year. The same Forrester Study showed only 19% believe games will become more effecting marketing vehicles in the next three years.

Fast forward to the end of August and I wrote a post titled Why Marketers Need To Get In The Game Of Online Games And Mobile Games in which I made reference to the The Trends In Social Advertising Survey – one finding of the survey in particular, the one that showed only 2% of respondents to this particular survey have utilized the online gaming giant in a social advertising campaign.

Apparently the good folks at Amazon are out to change the minds of the 84% of companies who have no plans to use online social games in their marketing strategies and in turn increase significantly the 2% who already are (using online social games) as they are actively seeking out developers and engineers to add to their new Social Games Group. In fact, a poster that hangs in a kitchen on Amazon’s new Seattle campus unveiled the Social Games Group as “Worldwide Breaking News” and proclaimed “The Group is growing fast!” And “We’re actively looking.”

As you can probably tell if by nothing else the title of my two aforementioned posts, I think the online social games field is wide open and is growing and a ridiculous pace and any marketer or company for that matter worth their weight in (insert your own joke here) would be wise to “get in the game” either from a marketing/advertising standpoint or in the case of Amazon, a development one.

A New Social Media Network?

I know, I know just the world needs. There’s not enough of them already right?… and with Microsoft at the very least rumored to be ready to jump in the social media pool themselves via Tulalip, all we need is another social media network but that’s precisely what may be going on at Amazon as we speak.

Think about it… Amazon could be creating a new social media network where consumers are able to connect with each other and discuss products they purchased or are thinking of buying on Amazon – sort of a consumer’s answer to Facebook. Amazon could also add a Facebook-type “Like” button and functionality.

No matter what Amazon ultimately does, it will be fun watching the other “kids” – Zynga, Facebook, Google, et al react, won’t it?

Source: reuters, smarthouse.com.au, Google Images, The Star Group, Amazon Wants A Piece Of The Social Media And Social Games Pie