Inside Social Games

Last month, Bebo announced the launch of its mobile virtual gifts service to Canadian users. The company says that, since growing by 43% in Canada in January, they have seen good traction on mobile virtual gifts around Valentine’s Day in February and again last week around St. Patrick’s Day. However, no hard numbers were announced. Bebo has said that they plan on rolling the service out to more countries in the future. Currently, Bebo works with O2 in the UK – in the four weeks after the program’s launch, local Bebo traffic increased by 60%.

Meanwhile, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe said in a memo announcing the departure of company executives earlier this month that the company is working on virtual goods monetization plans for 2009: “We’re at the tip of the iceberg with the Open Platform and in the coming year we expect major new launches including payments and virtual goods,” DeWolfe said. However, the company has been tight-lipped around any specific launch dates since.