Inside Social Games

Beijing-based Rekoo has been churning out social gaming hits not just on Facebook but on social networks in Asia — and now it has landed $1.5 million in funding from China and Israel-based venture fund Infinity Venture Partners, according to reports.

Readers of Inside Social Games will know Rekoo for its Facebook app, Animal Paradise and Sunshine Ranch, that together total 6.75 million monthly active users and 2.33 million daily active users, according to AppData. Both games are simulations, with the former letting you raise virtual animals (or even steal them from your friends) while the latter is a virtual farming game. They’ve grown to prominence over the last half a year or so, as we’ve been tracking.

In fact, after Japanese social network Mixi opened its site to third-party developers this past August, Rekoo moved in quick and made a version of the game for the site. That game now has 3.8 million users, or around 20 percent of the site’s total (incidentally, the same portion that Zynga’s farming game, FarmVille, has on Facebook). The company has previously — and successfully — launched these titles on Chinese social networks including 51.com, Xiaonei and others.

We previously heard unconfirmed reports that Rekoo was being circled by venture capital firms from the United States; it seems a more local firm won out. This is, intriguingly, also not a huge amount of funding compared to the tens of millions that some social gaming companies have raised — we assume the company is doing well selling virtual goods.