Monetizing Facebook Games: 'You're A Frickin' Media Company'

Wrong. Social games are not regular media. What is a media company? Media companies deal in information - it could be the news, analysis, up-to-the-second stock information or celebrity photographs. Media companies battle comodotization and charge through ads or subscriptions of some sort. Game (traditional) companies are like studios. You build something (you think) people want, market it and boom, you make money. Once someone buys your box/downloads your game on Steam, you're only concerned with how long they play (i.e. amount of fun they have) in the context of the sequel. As with movies and music, there are indie surprises (exceptions which prove the rule).

Social games companies (and many of the apps) only gets paid when people actually play their games (I'm simplifying this, because a lot of other factors add in, e.g. geography. But it's more of less true.). This is why they measure revenue by DAU (daily active users). You can bring this engagement around by analytics, behavioral science (social compulsion) or by making a damn good game, any which way you want. But you're in the business of making consumable experience which leave the user wanting more eventually. So social games have more in common with the drug trade than media companies/traditional games.