Booyah, the enigmatic social developer for the iPhone, has stirred up some buzz behind its first “cause-oriented” game. After months of speculation, the company finally released a humanist title in July, by the name of Booyah Society that tasked players with the objective to “level up in life.”

In a nutshell, players tweeted or wrote status updates using their preferred social network (Twitter and/or Facebook respectively) and with a press of a single button could add the suffix “BOOYAH!” as in “I just ran five miles. BOOYAH!” Players could do this to earn achievements that were unlocked in game and allowed them to further customize their own personal avatar.

We thought it was an interesting game premise, and considering the high quality and big name background of Booyah’s team, we had a lot of questions about the company, the game, and where they were going. And, the company seems to be doing well — it has just raised $5 million according to a regulatory filing discovered by peHUB, following a first round of $4.5 million from Kleiner Perkins. BOOYAH!

We recently caught up with CEO Keith Lee to learn a bit more.

[Inside Social Games] Thank you speaking with us. So, back in May we started talking about your “cause-oriented” games. Come August, you released Booyah Society. I know it’s very general, but what’s your fundamental motivation behind making this type of game?

[Keith Lee] Given our past experiences in the gaming industry, we knew how game techniques can really motivate people to play games for hundreds of hours on their computers. We asked ourselves if we could leverage that same set of experiences to inspire people to engage in real-world activities.

[ISG] Let’s talk about those “past experiences” for a moment. You and a number of team members have come from a number of high profile companies, including Blizzard. What coaxed you into leaving for the iPhone space?

[KL] We’ve always been excited by the mobile space. The availability of GPS and the fact that it’s always with you opens up opportunities to engage people in new ways. Last year, the unique capabilities of the iPhone and the emergence of the app ecosystem made it the ideal platform for proving out our concept.

[ISG] Obviously, your products are very different at Booyah than they were at Blizzard. However, all things considered, what would you say has been the biggest difference between development at Blizzard versus Booyah? What would you say is still the same?

[KL] As a small start-up, the biggest difference is that we constantly had to weigh the costs of creating a product of high fidelity vs. time to market. That was rarely an issue at Blizzard. In terms of similarities, we carry the same work culture as Blizzard — we focus on high performance, results oriented, team-based individuals. As a result, process and rules become less important.

[ISG] Speaking of process, how does your creative process work at Booyah?

[KL] Our creative process starts with welcoming change and having an open company culture. We constantly challenge our assumptions with the mindset to change…a lot. Polish is never left for the end of the project, it occurs though out our process. And we also don’t take the small decisions for granted — it’s the small stuff that derails the best products.

[ISG] What about production? How does development usually work for you and with what sort of dev cycles do you run on?

[KL] It starts with our design concept. Most of the time spent on the design document is scoping and staging the product development. We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make it clear to the engineering team. For every feature we add, we think about how to eliminate one. And we focus on which systems should be built first so our designers can play with the prototype as early as possible. Given the fast pace of the iPhone app ecosystem, we make sure our dev cycles are shorter than a month. Not only does this provide discipline to our team, but it gives us more opportunity to get feedback from the community.

[ISG] So I guess that means the general turnaround is less than StarCraft 2’s 10 year development, eh?

[KL] Yes, our development cycle’s a magnitude shorter given the highly competitive, rapid pace of the iPhone app ecosystem. Blizzard’s approach is different from ours — it’s built on the long term vision and commitment to make the highest quality games.

[ISG] Let’s come back to Booyah Society. Your tag line is “level up in life.” What sort of user base do you guys have at the moment (MAUs)?

[KL] Booyah Society’s had hundreds of thousands of installs. That said, our focus is not so much on total installs, but growing our core user base. These are the people we care most about since they’re using app every day. If we can nurture and expand our core users (as well as increase our frequency of usage) every week, we’ll continue to be a success.

[ISG] Quick aside regarding Booyah Society: Has there been any particular demographic that has been more dominant than any of the others? (i.e. age, location, etc.)

[KL] We’ve noticed that half our users on Booyah Society are iPod Touch users. Our users are predominantly based in the US and their median age is 23 years old.

[ISG] Now, I’m curious to know how exactly the game works. The game play is described as recognizing what you Tweet or update on Facebook, and if you “Booyah!!!” you get an achievement. How exactly does the game realize you’ve completed an achievement? Does it look for key words, phrases, or something along those lines? If so, how forgiving is the algorithm?

[KL] In Booyah Society, you earn achievements for social activity such as posting on Facebook. You can also earn another set of achievements for earning “Likes” or “Comments” on Facebook. Finally, you can also earn achievements by posting in real-world locations all across the world (GPS achievements). However, there’s a more sophisticated method that we’re planning to put in place. Our long therm goal, however, is still social validation (“Likes” and “Comments”). There’s a certain level of self-regulation that occurs that way, and we want people to encourage and motivate each other during the day.

[ISG] Back in August Booyah Society had a relatively unused virtual currency. Is that still the case? Also, what are the future plans for this feature?

[KL] In our latest update for Booyah Society, you’ll notice that your earn points for all completed achievements. By reaching a certain point score, you’ll earn new outfits for your avatar – [with a fully functional inventory system] – such as the chicken, mech robot, ninja suit, and more. There’ll be new ways for using these points in upcoming releases.

[ISG] Let’s look towards the future now. Is Booyah focused on Booyah Society, or are other games planned? Throw us a bone!

[KL] Yes, our company has other products in the works besides Booyah Society. And yes, one might be a game in the truest sense of the word. Ultimately, it’s all a unified strategy to carry our vision to motivate and inspire people.

[ISG] Hmm, well, I can’t wait to learn what exactly that means. In the mean time, what can you tell us about upcoming Booyah Society updates?

[KL] Besides introducing more GPS achievements, we’ll have a new mechanism for people to check-in to locations. We’re also adding our meta-game on top of Booyah Society, new items for the avatar, and a way for users to interact with each other on the global map.

[ISG] Well, thank you again for taking the time to speak with us. Before you go though, I have to ask: What’s the story behind the name “Booyah” anyway?

[KL] I bought the URL a long time ago back in college during the peak time of Stuart Scott and Jim Cramer. I always believed the name will be used to start a company. More importantly, it fits perfectly with our company vision since Booyah is all about a sense of accomplishment.

Following our story about a possible partnership between Zynga and pre-paid game card company InComm today, Playdom has told us that it is officially going to roll out pre-paid cards, and also with InComm.

The idea here is to let anyone with loose change buy pre-paid cards, then enter a code from those cards to buy virtual currencies and goods within games. They are designed for teenagers without access to credit cards or mobile phone accounts that other payment services required.

InComm cards are available at around 150,000 retail locations. “Playdom Game Cards,” at the cost of $10 and $15 apiece, will be available at some Target and Walgreen stores in the middle of next month and then at 7-11 stores later this year. Players can use them to buy things like weapons arsenals in Mobsters 2: Vendetta and or designer apparel in Sorority Life. In terms of the target buyers, Playdom isn’t disclosing what portion of its 28 million monthly active users on social networks like Facebook and MySpace are teens — just “a growing number” according to Mike Ouye, the company’s director of monetization.

A market leader in pre-paid cards, InComm has already been seeing traction with virtual world and massive multiplayer online gaming companies. It claims to have grown its virtual currency card business “200%” in 2008, although it’s not disclosing how much revenue that actually was for the company. The company, accordingly, is making sure to show up at gaming industry events like the Game Developers Conference in Austin earlier this month.

With around 16 million monthly active users, Playfish’s Restaurant City has been growing steadily since its launch — monetizing through a variety of virtual goods, it appears to be a solid hit. Well, that popularity has been noted by the competition, and it looks like Zynga is stepping into the restaurant business as well with its newest title, Café World.

As far as basic concepts go, Café World is the same as Restaurant City. Each player creates restaurant, decorates it, hires friends, and basically runs a business. However, both games do feel very different and are likely to appeal to different types of people. Here’s a closer look at the differences:

Cooking – Point: Café World

Obviously making food is a huge part of a restaurant game and creating an ample smorgasbord is part of the fun. In order to cook food in Café World, players have to purchase the ingredients to a recipe after clicking on an empty stove. They then have to cut, dice, smash, or whatever else is needed to prepare a myriad of dishes before cooking them. Dishes take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 days to cook  and then it is placed on a counter for serving with a set number of times it can be served. The more time it takes to cook, and the greater the cost, the more servings available. Customers can feast on already-made food, and can have a very wide selection (even though the customers don’t “order” it themselves); space is only limited by the number of counters and stoves that a player has.

Restaurant City, on the other hand, does cooking passively. Patrons order from your preset menu of limited dishes (thankfully it has been increased, but is still limited to a finite number, regardless of level), but you have to trade for, buy, or earn individual ingredients on a daily basis before you can make a certain dish. Yes, trading the ingredients adds a social element, and yes you can level up dishes, but it just feels less involved than Café World. Point: Café World.

Hiring Friends – Point: Restaurant City

Not only was Playfish the first to introduce friend hires in a major game, but users have a lot of control over it. Granted, you cannot change the look of a friend’s avatar, but you can at least change a uniform and job. As it stands, Café World only allows them to be waiters at the moment, and their clothing seems to be unchangeable. Restaurant City on the other hand… if you want to put a friend in a French maid’s outfit, then by all means, go ahead. Point: Restaurant City.

Restaurant Expansion – Point: Café World

This is one of the biggest differences between the games. As you level up in Restaurant City, you either earn new employees or a bigger restaurant. However, in Café World, you must manually expand and to do so, you must have “neighbors.” This means you must have friends playing the game in order to have a bigger place. Frankly, the trading of ingredients, working in others’ restaurants, and having your friends all on one street, in Restaurant City, seemed social enough. However, if friends don’t want to play, it won’t affect you too much. For Café World, if you can’t get friends to play, then you seem to be stuck with a tiny little restaurant. Sure you can take the Mafia Wars approach and add random people, but that just sort of looses any personal meaning. Nonetheless, you could have a huge restaurant in a significantly shorter amount of time. With that in mind – Point: Café World.

Customization – Point: Restaurant City

This is the most important part of both of these games, hands down. From oriental, to medieval, to modern, these games provide players with the means to truly create something that is of their own style. However, the Playfish title simply has more options than Zynga’s. Okay, yes, it has been out longer, so the developer have had more time to add new items, but beyond this, the players can only decorate their interiors with Café World. Restaurant City, on the other hand, allows you to customize both the interior and exterior of your restaurant; a feature that has been available since day one. Point: Restaurant City.

Frankly, both games are good, and it really comes down to a play style choice. Café World has more involved cooking and dish selections and potential, rapid expansion, while Restaurant City has more control over hired friends and better customization. Will these features change in the coming months? Probably, as both companies add more content. However, with the massive head start and the tremendously larger selection of items to decorate with that Restaurant City has, it will be a rigorous challenge for Café World to catch up.

Zynga, however, is far larger than Playfish, with 126 million monthly active users total across its games versus Playfish’s 55.3 million. Both companies cross-promote games to users. This means that both companies have far fewer unique users than the above numbers suggest — but the numbers also indicate that Zynga has many more opportunities to cross-promote Café World via massive hits like FarmVille. Zynga has also aggressively bought advertising for games on sites like Facebook. So, Playfish, for all of its success with Restaurant City, appears to have a serious competitor on its hands — even though Café World currently has only around 32 users.

Prepaid game cards are becoming an increasingly popular way for players to buy virtual currency in MMOs and virtual worlds, and they may soon become a popular way for players of social games on Facebook and MySpace.

Zynga, the largest developer of Facebook and MySpace games — and who we hear is nearing $200 million in annualized revenue — may soon launch a series of prepaid cards with leading provider InComm, we hear. The cards would enable players to purchase credit toward virtual currency in popular Zynga games like Texas HoldEm Poker, YoVille, FarmVille, and more.

InComm, whose cards are available in 145,000 retail stores worldwide, could help boost Zynga’s virtual currency sales in particular with players who don’t have access to a credit card. Prepaid cards are especially popular with younger players who may not be able to bill significant purchases to their parents’ credit cards and who may not be eligible to participate in other alternative payment methods like offers. They are often sold at cash registers in game, grocery, electronics, and convenience stores.

Earlier this year, InComm reported that their game currency card business grew 200% over early 2008, and has been launching new gaming cards throughout the year with partners like Cartoon Network and Ndoors. Adding a partner like Zynga could drive InComm’s business even faster this year.

During the E3 conference this summer, we talked extensively about the increasingly social elements of Microsoft’s Xbox Live and its transformation into a budding social space reminiscent of a PC networks. Back then there was the mention of freemium games on Xbox Live with a game called Joy Ride. Well, it looks like things are becoming official for Joy Ride as Microsoft recently announced the coming launch of the freemium title, slated to appear during the 2009 holiday season.

In interviews with Gamasutra, Shane Kim, Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Strategy and Business Development talked about the possibility of PC-oriented companies developing a freemium market for Xbox Live. However, since the platform is not a completely open-system, like the PC, developers would have to determine if producing games for Live would be “worth the economic trade-off.” Joy Ride developer, Big Park, will be the first to try to test those waters.

In a nutshell, Joy Ride is a fairly simple racing game where up to eight players will be able to participate in stunt races using their Xbox Live avatars as drivers. Also, since the game is classified as “freemium,” it is, of course, free to play, but will be monetized through the selling of virtual goods, such as cars, custom parts, avatar clothing, and more game content.

As far as social mechanics goes, Big Park has also said that the game will incorporate your standard leaderboard systems as well as the voice chat that Xbox Live utilizes for most of its existing games. Furthermore, they have stated that they will continue to add new content over time such as new game modes, new race tracks and something dubbed “huge community tasks.”

Though all of this is indeed interesting, the biggest point to take home is that this is a test for both Big Park and Microsoft. Of course, it isn’t the first “test” that we have seen involving the marriage of mainstream and social concepts. The most prominent one that comes to mind is The Sims 3 on iPhone. That, too, was considered a “test” by Electronic Arts, and was intended to see if highly polished iPhone games would be worthwhile. Also, let’s not forget other mainstream developers, such as Ubisoft, delving into similar spaces and the handful of others currently dabbling in virtual goods. Nevertheless, and unlike said examples, this “Joy Ride test” is the first one to apply to a traditional, home video game console — a type of platform that has almost always been mainstream and focused around hardcore gamers.

More often than not, the simplest games are always the most fun. Sure enough, we found a Facebook and iPhone app that fit that description justly. It’s a little puzzle game called The Plateau from iPhone, Mac, Android, and PC developer Spoonjuice. Having only been around for less than two weeks, the game hasn’t taken off yet, but as unique as this puzzler feels, it certainly has the potential to do so.

The objective of the game is simple. Player are presented with a space-scape type of screen, upon which there are varying numbers of orbs. Connecting each orb is a glowing line. In order to solve the puzzle, you have to drag the orbs around so that none of the lines interconnect; you “untangle” them, if you will. Each correct movement earns you points — not to mention the occasional blue orb that earns you extra points, but be quick because they don‘t remain for very long — and when the puzzle is solved you move on to a harder one.

Frankly, “harder” may be a bit of an understatement, because unless you are a very visual person, it can become very difficult. Of course, that is part of the fun, is it not? If it turns out to be too easy though, players can switch the game between two modes: Challenge or Arcade. Challenge is the more traditional mode where you can take your time to figure things out, while Arcade keeps the pressure on with a time limit that rests around 40 seconds or so (at least in the earlier stages). Furthermore, greater challenges are issued by the fact that you are connected and competing with other Facebook players and friends for high scores.

The presentation for Plateau is astounding as well. As simple as the game may be, it looks and sounds beautiful. The visuals add a refreshing space-age style to the game that ranges from vivid nebulas, shining supernovas, and the gapping maws of black holes. In fact, it turns out that the artwork was created by an Apple Design Award winner, Piotr Gajos. Furthermore, the ambient background music (composed by Sergei Starko) and sound effects fade well into the background, supporting the solving of puzzles rather than being distracting.

Suffice to say, this game is fantastic. It’s simple, it’s beautiful, it’s challenging, and above all, it’s fun. Whether you play it for the iPhone or Facebook, this game will not disappoint if you like puzzle games titles even a little, and comes highly recommended.

Like its overgrown canine namesake, social gaming company Zynga has become the largest developer on Facebook’s platform over the past year. And, it cannot get away from whispers about its plans for an initial public offering. A key reason: Within the last six months, it has piled on a series of hit games, from virtual poker game Texas Hold ‘Em to mob-themed role-playing game Mafia Wars to virtual world YoVille — and most recently, FarmVille, which just hit 50 million monthly active users this past week.

It is proving the possibility of social gaming companies being long-term hit factories, not unlike more traditional, publicly-traded gaming companies like EA. And it is, from what we and others here, bringing in the money to prove that it is a real business.

So what’s going on with the IPO plan? This spring, a reliable industry source insisted that Zynga was in the process of closing a round of funding for possibly around $30 million. Another industry source now adds that it had at that point hired Allen & Co., the boutique investment bank, to raise a round of funding with a valuation between $550 million and $600 million. But when we asked about the funding, then, the company adamantly denied that it had raised any new round.

Here’s what happened. At some point, Zynga decided to stop looking to raise money, we believe, so it can plan an eventual IPO. By June, Business Insider heard that the company would IPO within the next “18 months.” A second new source has recently told us that conversations in this direction have become more serious.

When would Zynga IPO?

Outside estimates of Zynga’s revenue have been climbing over the past year, from $50 million, to more than $100 million, to what we most recently hear is around $200 million. Given Zynga’s across-the-board growth in top games, this number could very well be higher. On Facebook, the company has 125 million monthly active users on at least 31 games, according to our AppData service, although clearly a large minority of these users play more than one of the apps, and so are being counted more than once. It also has top games on MySpace and other social networks, including an exclusive deal with Tagged.

The company has not excelled at originality in the games themselves, so much as its ability to execute. Nearly every one of its hit titles is derived from other companies’ versions of the same genre — poker, mafia role-playing games, virtual farming, etc. But it has figured out how to build, cross-promote, advertise and measure these games in ways that have made it twice as large as the second-largest Facebook app developer, Playfish.

Zynga makes money from selling virtual currencies so gamers can buy virtual goods, like virtual poker chips in Texas Hold ‘Em. Unlike Playfish and some other gaming rivals, it has also been making what must be a large portion of its money off of advertising offers. It has also, from what we hear, been bringing in more and more of these services in-house: building its own fraud system, for example, to help manage its virtual currencies.

There are questions about where some of Zynga’s money might come from in the long term, given that the company — as with most social gaming companies — is only as old as the launch of Facebook’s developer platform in May of 2007. Will offers prove less lucrative? Will other developers make more popular games?

The public markets

The virtual goods economy has only been panning out for Facebook developers since 2008, but it has been proven in countries like China and Korea. Games and social networks in those countries have long made far more money off of this revenue model. Perhaps most prominent is Chinese social network Tencent, and its $1 billion in annual revenue, predominantly from things like virtual clothes for avatars, coins in games, etc.

Two recent IPOs, from China’s massive multiplayer online game-makers Changyou and Shanda, also suggest that there is at least some overall interest for those gaming companies with this revenue model who go public. Certainly, Shanda’s IPO last Friday did not go as well as planned, even though its revenue and profits are looking healthy. In the first half of this year, net revenue grew 43% to $322 million, while net income increased 75% to $98 million, versus the previous year. The company raised $1.04 billion, the largest US-listed IPO of the year. This is in contrast to Changyou’s April IPO — that company raised much less money, and its stock has since more than doubled in value. Shanda, so far, appears to be overpriced versus what the market was hoping for. Shanda’s problem may be food for Zynga’s thought, as it considers when to go public.

So, do investors want to own the largest developer on Facebook and MySpace? They may be able to find out soon. Some industry sources we’ve talked to have suggested that Zynga could make a bold move to file before Thanksgiving, trying to immediately build on the overall attention it and the industry is getting. A more conservative strategy would mean waiting for the first quarter, or maybe second quarter of next year.

For now, though, the company is downplaying any public offering plans.”We are excited about the growth of the social gaming industry and our momentum,” Vish Makhijani, Zynga’s chief operating officer, tells us. “We are not focused on an IPO but on creating great games and building a company that has lasting value to consumers.”

Zynga’s decisions

Meanwhile, Facebook itself is already cash-flow positive, through its brand and self-serve advertising services — mostly not through virtual goods — and is likely to bring in more than $550 million in revenue this year. Zynga, notably, has been buying up millions of dollars in some of these ads to promote its games to Facebook users. One of our sources suggested Zynga could be on track to pay Facebook up to $50 million, but we have not been able to confirm this.

Facebook’s strategy is to try to grow its revenue streams as much as possible, rather than first subjecting itself to the constant scrutiny and the short-term demands of the public market. Zynga, especially given the growth of games like FarmVille over the last few months, appears to be doing the same — that game only launched in June and is now at 51.5 million monthly actives, with nearly 19 million accessing the app every day. Perhaps Zynga will go public when its growth slows? The risk, of course, is that if it waits too long, investors may have become more cynical about gaming companies, and value it far lower than it would be now on the market, even if the money has well-proven revenue by that point. The Chinese gaming stocks could be an interesting indicator of public sentiment, until Zynga has an IPO.

If Zynga wants to buy other gaming companies or continue quickly building its own infrastructure, an IPO would be one way to raise cash. But it apparently doesn’t need to, instead it is financing its own growth and paying for its expenses like massive advertising campaigns and its 500 employees.

Once the user and revenue growth slows, going public would make more sense. The money from an offering would let it continue gaining market share in a way that other rivals are less likely to be able to do.

The other effect of a Zynga IPO would be that other market leaders, especially Playdom and Playfish, are validated. But because they are smaller, they may not look as promising for their own public prospects. Big media and game companies have been losing money in the last couple of years. These new social gaming companies, especially the biggest and most profitable ones, will look like tempting acquisitions.

But all this speculation is early. Remember, social games as we know them today have been around less than two years, and their revenue models even less time than that. We would be surprised to see a Zynga IPO within the next six months.

[Zynga photo via The New York Times.]

You may have noticed that the term “microtransaction” has been used less and less in recent months. While it describe the purchase of virtual goods that have, in the past, been around the cost of a dollar (sometimes less, sometimes a little more) it has given way to a term we prefer to use, “virtual goods transactions.” And with games like Urban Rivals selling virtual goods that cost $9.99 on the iPhone, you can see one of the reasons behind the change.

Urban Rivals, created by French publisher Boostr, is actually a freemium, online multiplayer CCG (collectible card game) that has players battling some very distinctive characters, leveling up, collecting more power, and vying for supremacy against one another. Starting only with a single set of eight characters, players must purchase booster packs to improve their deck. Up until now, however, such packs were purchased using an in-game virtual currency called Clintz that worked for both the web and mobile renditions of the game. Now, like many successful games in the past (i.e. Mobsters), Urban Rivals is looking to also expand to the iPhone.

This is where the pricing come into play, as Urban Rivals’ US and UK Marketing Manager Nick Witcher told PocketGamer. The traditional cost of cards cost anywhere from $0.99 to $40 worth of virtual currency based on the number of card packs you wanted to buy ($1 is one pack of three cards). This was all purchased through the Clintz currency, but Apple doesn’t actually allow for virtual currency purchases through its applications, even if it can bought for other renditions of an iPhone-connected title.

This difference forced Urban Rivals to get around the restriction by creating a storefront that made use of Apple’s in-app transaction system — charging for the cards directly using real money rather than utilizing the virtual currency to make purchases like it did in the web version. Obviously, such a system was needed to allow for fair play amongst all the different available game platforms. However, the $9.99 offer, a set of 11 booster packs, will be an exclusive deal to iPhone users, but will be coupled with only three character pack purchases for $0.99 as an alternative. Not to worry though, as players of game will still be able to earn all the in-game credits, through play, that they could before with Urban Rivals’ older platforms. They simply can’t buy them the same way.

AppBank is a new service that lets social network users build apps and make money from them.

With thousands of apps ranging from quizzes and gifting programs, to polls and games, Facebook has become a goliath within the social space. However, even with all the social developers out there, a large portion of those apps come from the users themselves — as seen with the success of companies like LOLapps. To this end, AppBank is looking to provide a free means for those creative individuals to earn a little extra cash, per month, for their hard work using an ad-share model.

Don’t know how to program? Not really a problem because AppBank actually has an app creator for quizzes, gifts, polls, surveys, tests, and games. Furthermore, signing up includes access to guides, tutorial videos, and templates, and claims to be exceedingly simple. The only thing users seem to need to know (beyond basic computer skills such as uploading pictures or YouTube videos) is how to fill out a W9 form for tax purposes.

Financially, this platform doesn’t seem like too bad an idea either, if you find yourself with a little extra time.

With 300 million global Facebook users, one can see just how large an audience one can encompass. Of course, AppBank isn’t foolish enough to claim you can quit your job like some late night infomercial, but rather suggests it more as a supplemental form of income for things like college books or gas money. Nonetheless, the company does state that their current top earners are making around $769 a month.

Though the number is high for your average individual, it is possible for two reasons. First, AppBank’s “crowdsourcing” model matches ads more relevantly to the application being used than your normal Facebook advertisement. Second, AppBank has a very visual dashboard that can track important analytics and user information such as sex, age, and location, allowing for more precise tuning of whom your app is tailored for.

The company is also trying to patent some of the technology it used to create the service.

The prospect of Twitter as a social gaming platform is something that’s been touched on numerous times in the past, but it wasn’t until last week that that concept really felt plausible. Author of Twitter for Dummies, Laura Fitton launched a brand new platform called oneforty that will act as an actual app store for the Twitter network.

Okay, granted, Twitter does have a directory for its apps, but this is a mere list of what can be found. What makes oneforty stand out is that any user can tag, sort, and review over 1,300 different applications such as Tweetie, Bit.ly, twitterfeed, and CoTweet. Furthermore, and like a Facebook app’s splash page, each application gets its own space where users can add comments and screenshots. Sounds a lot like a wall on a Facebook Page, doesn’t it? Of course, this page needs to be managed — thus any of its developers are able to register with oneforty and “claim” an app so they can manage its page. With this new listing of games and apps already ranked and containing user reviews, the usefulness behind it is already significant. However, oneforty is dubbed an “app store,” and as such, some form of monetization is expected to be involved.

While most Twitter apps are free, there really isn’t much to monetize from them. However, if a Twitter app does have a cost, then oneforty will keep a small share of it. In addition to this, the new platform is looking to offer premium promotional locations on the site for developers. Said placement is similar to where sponsor advertisements would be placed on most web pages. Considering the increased distribution success that has stemmed from other application directories and stores containing ratings and user reviews (iPhone, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), this cost may turn out most worthwhile.

Wrought with social mechanics, rankings, and even monetization features, oneforty marks a huge step forward for Twitter as it continues to evolve into a greater space for both games and apps.

[image via VentureBeat]