In her widely-read report on Internet trends, current Morgan Stanley (soon to be Kleiner Perkins) analyst Mary Meeker poses an interesting question: Do humans want everything to be like a game?  Given what's happening across the Web, it's hard to answer anything but yes.  Life, as we well know, is largely a game, yet it's difficult to imagine certain aspects of life acquiring game-like features.  Money is one of those aspects (with the exception of online trading which, more than ever, resembles video gaming).

But back in July we shared our opinion that financial services represents the next frontier for social gaming.  Imagine our excitement when recently we learned how Kiva, theP2P microlender, views social game juggernaut Zynga, not other nonprofits, as a competitive threat.  Kiva sees the user engagement of Zynga's wildly successful social games as mounting a competitive challenge to its growth strategy.  Games such as FarmVille command large audiences of highly engaged users, users who might otherwise peruse Kiva's website to look for microlending opportunities.  Kiva concedes that if they are to raise their forecasted $1 billion in microloans by 2015, then it must integrate more game-like mechanics and social features into its business model.

The success of Zynga games such as FarmVille, FrontierVille, and CafeWorld is truly breathtaking.  FarmVille alone commands a Facebook audience of over 53 million monthly active users.  How can Kiva, with a (respectable) 300k monthly uniques and 802,571 users(of which 507,302 have funded a loan), possibly hope to compete with such a Goliath?  Our recommendation is simple:  Don't beat them - join them.   We believe a Kiva-Zynga strategic partnership is Kiva's best bet for rapid and cost effective deployment of the social architecture it seeks.  But a knock-off ("MicroVille") of one of Zynga's social games would not be advisable.  The space is already overcrowded, and a simple game, if not carefully crafted, could potentially undermine the legitimacy of Kiva's social mission.

In part 2 of this post we will share some ideas on how Kiva can become more social, as well as some Kiva-Zynga deal structures designed to help put an effective social microlending strategy in motion.