Card games are a popular activity in virtually every corner of the globe, and there is no option from this entertainment form that can rival poker in terms of establishment. It allegedly has an online player pool of one hundred million individuals actively enjoying this social pastime on the Web. Per Customer Market Insights, a notable market research/consultancy firm, the Internet poker gambling sector had a market size of 102 billion dollars in 2024, with this same company projecting that this sector will post annual revenues of over three hundred billion in the next eight years.
Chris Moneymaker’s shocking 2003 WSOP Main Event win strapped a rocket to poker and caused the game’s active boom throughout the 2000s. However, something that does not get talked about nearly enough is that social media platforms featuring for-fun poker action kept the game alive in the US following the event called Black Friday in 2011, when the US government shut down the most famous online poker gambling brands, and stopped them from offering their services to Americans.
At that time, actual gambling poker websites were not yet a thing. Nevada was the first US state to allow its residents over twenty-one to play poker for money legally on the Web, doing so in April 2013. Five months later, Delaware followed suit, and around the same time, so did New Jersey. But nowadays, even with real money play available in several US regions and offshore gambling hubs, more Americans and people from other countries choose to partake in poker fun on social media and compete in tournaments for bragging rights or novelty prizes, where they form lasting connections with each other.
How Facebook Helped Poker
As mentioned above, at the start of the 2000s, poker was becoming a global craze, with some also contributing this to the 1998 film Rounders, which introduced many to it. However, by 2006, card gambling seemed to have peaked in terms of popularity, and to many, it looked like the general public’s infatuation with it was starting to dwindle.
Around this time, Facebook was only two years old and beginning to gain a footing in the Internet arena, with companies taking it seriously as a marketing tool and a means to promote themselves. In 2007, Facebook surpassed MySpace in global traffic. That same year, Zynga Poker launched, which in 2011 was the biggest poker platform ever, boasting thirty-eight million users. Zynga got up and running in San Mateo, California, where it still operates. It managed to tap into the emerging Facebook gaming trend, a landscape it later spearheaded and carried with its FarmVille and Words with Friends series.
The massive success of Zynga Poker on Facebook and the rise of US real money poker sites encouraged Zynga to try establishing an actual card gambling platform outside the United States in 2013. It also inspired other social media giants like Orkut and MySpace to experiment with poker games at the tail end of the 2000s. Snapchat even featured poker, but as of February 2023, all games were disabled on this American instant messaging service.
Thus, Facebook’s role in social media poker cannot be denied, as it helped set the foundation for this gaming arena.
The Appeal of Social Media Poker
Without question, the main factor that most people select to play poker on social media is accessibility. Most of these individuals are not super tech-savvy and fear accessing sites they have never visited. Hence, Facebook and other platforms like it give them a secure, integrated environment where they can partake in some card fun. They do this without complex setups or demands to download/install additional software. They can instantly dive into this type of entertainment with only a few clicks.
Another massive positive is that most of their friends and family are likely active on the same social platform, and they can easily invite them to join them to compete and socialize. Those things are made possible via real-time chat features, leaderboards, badges/statuses, and more, all of which help build camaraderie. The social connectivity and sense of accomplishment are also boosted by various competitions that social poker providers run, which can include gift card rewards. Most often, winners get in-game currencies to exchange later for such prizes.
Lastly, the free-to-play model makes poker accessible to broad audiences, who can use these games as an entry point to pick up and learn the rules and strategies of the game.
Future Potential of Social Media Poker
Virtual Reality technology has not attained the global fan base many predicted it would in 2016 when the first Oculus headset became commercially available. Nonetheless, gamers are increasingly coming to VR gaming, and the Stars Group has tapped into this gaming category quite well with its Lucky VR-developed Vegas Infinite by PokerStars VR game. Hence, given its success, it is reasonable to assume that social media companies will look to boost interaction on their platforms with VR experiences, starting with featuring VR games.
It would not surprise us if these companies also developed their native crypto tokens, which holders can exchange for other digital assets and offer as tournament prizes, using them to incentivize people to play for something more than community recognition.
