14 social companies showed hiring activity this week, based on information from LinkedIn and other sources, though most of the developers bringing on only one or two new individuals.

Out of these, three – SponsorPay, We R Interactive, and Wild Tangent – made managerial hires. As part of SponsorPay’s U.S. expansion, the company brought on Dave Westin as its new SVP and general manager where he will focus on U.S. sales and business development activities. Christian Purslow joins We R Interactive’s board as the newly created non-executive independent director. And as for Wild Tangent, it gains Brett Orlanski as its new director of business development.

As always, if your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email editor (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get it into this or next week’s post. Also, please note that the information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn, and is only as current as each person’s profile.

Looking for new opportunities? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s full list:

5th Planet Games

• Colby Schneider, QA Lead — 5th Planet Games brings on a single hire. Schneider was previously a QA analyst for Zynga.

CrowdStar

• Aggie Cheung, Artist — Joining CrowdStar this week, Cheung was previously an artist for Playdom.

Gaia Interactive

• Yvonne Chow, User Interface Designer — In an internal shift at Gaia Interactive, Chow was previously a graphic designer.

GSN

• Matt Durgavich, Game Programmer — GSN brings on Durgavich, a former programmer for Rockstar Games.
• Lauren Foye, Mobile Publishing Manager — Also now a part of GSN, Foye was formerly a marketing manager for Isabella Products.

iWin

• Christian Hernandez, UI Designer — iWin fills us in on the hiring of Hernandez, whose previous experience stems from Hitatchi GST.
• Ariel Katz, Software Engineer — Also joining iWin is Katz, who is formerly from Sony.

Kabam

• Jill Hu, Flash Developer/Software Engineer — Now at Kabam, Hu was previously a software engineer for Ohai. That said, the hiring appears to only be a late update.

Nordeus

• Vladimir Mitrović, Software Development Engineer — Joining Nordeus this week is Mitrović. He was previously a lead iOS developer for NextWidget.
• Venijamin Živković, Software Development Engineer in Test — Also joining Nordeus, Živković was formerly an analyst team leader for ApexSQL LLC.

Playdom

• Samson James, Manager – Human Resources — Starting off a trio of new Playdom hires is James. James’ prior experience includes an HR executive position at Mind Source Consulting Services.
• Stephen Justice, Quality Assurance Lead — In an internal change at Playdom, Justice moves up from a quality assurance tester.
• Gitin George, QA Test Engineer — Also joining Playdom is George, a former test engineer for e4e.

Playfish

• Seema Dookie, Scrum Master — Joining Playfish this week is Dookie, who was previously a business analyst at Rank Interactive.

PopCap Games

• Carter Edwards, Finance Department Intern — Marking a single hire for PopCap Games, Edwards was most recently a lead manager for Eastside Boat Manager.

SponsorPay

• Dave Westin, SVP & General Manager — As part of its U.S. expansion, SponsorPay brings on Dave Westin as its new SVP and general manager. Before SponsorPay, Westin was VP of sales at Gambit and later SupersonicAds.
• Maria Virginia Baptista, Operations Manager — SponsorPay makes an internal change as Baptista shifts roles from a customer services agent.
• Jessica Eliason, Recruitment Manager — Prior to SponsoryPay, Eliason was an assistant at Hays.

We R Interactive

• Christian Purslow, Non-Executive Independent Director — As noted prior, Christian Purslow joins the We R Interactive Board and is now in the newly created role of non-executive independent director. He was previously a managing director for Liverpool FC.

Wild Tangent

• Brett Orlanski, Director of Business Development — In yet another major hire. Brett Orlanski joins Wild Tangent as its new director of business development. Previously, he was VP of business development at Virtual Greats.
• Enric Pedró, Sales Coordinator, EMEA — In an internal change at Wild Tangent, Pedró moves from his prior role as consumer marketing, EMEA.

Zynga

• Jana Johnson, 3D Contract Artist — Kicking off a fairly small week of new hires for Zynga is Johnson, a former 3D contract artist for Disney Interactive Media Group.
• Antara Sara Mahthai, Producer — Now at Zynga, Mathai was previously an assistant manager for Star TV.
• Truman Simpson, QA Engineer — Simpson was formerly a senior quality assurance tester for Sony Computer Entertainment America.
• Rainer Knopf, Community Support Specialist — Also joining Zynga this week is Knopf whose prior role is unknown.
• Mauro Fiore, Senior Game Designer — Fiore was most recently a senior game designer for Rockstar Games.

French video game developer and publisher Ubisoft hasn’t always had it easy with the Facebook platform, but it’s newly-released The Smurfs & Co. paints a rosy picture of the company’s social game strategy going forward.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, The Smurfs & Co. currently has 4,160,184 monthly active users and 1,181,223 daily active users.

Despite the “& Co.” name, Ubisoft’s Smurfs has less in common with its Castle & Co. title than it does with 6waves Lolapps’ Ravenwood Fair. According to Ubisoft, the name was chosen simply because the same team crafted both games. In The Smurfs & Co. players take the role of a male or female smurf tasked with building a new Smurf village after the evil Gargamel discovers the location of the original village. This inovles clearing land and constructing homes and workshops as part of a smurf relocation effort. Gameplay activity is limited by an energy gauge and by the total number of resources needed to purchase and then construct various structures.

As players increase an overall Happiness rating for their village by adding structures and decorations, “celebrity” smurfs from the franchise’s roster of characters begin appear in the village, demanding more structures or decorations. Players must continuously clear the land of plants and rocks to harvest resources for building and supplying structures. There is no farming mechanic or worker number restriction, which firmly sets The Smurfs & Co. apart from Capcom Mobile’s The Smurfs Village for iOS.

For those confused by the agreements that separate social and mobile gaming rights to a licenses, know that it’s common practice for large franchises to divide up the brand across a number of partners for different platforms so that they can choose top-performers on each platform. Sometimes, this even splits out by geographic region, which is why there were multiple licensed Deal or No Deal social games on Facebook for different regions before developer iWin negotiated for worldwide rights to develop a Facebook game.

Getting back to the Smurfs on Facebook, Ubisoft has strong cross-promotion for the recently-released The Smurfs film that has contributed to its early release growth despite the fact that the game leverages the art and characters of the original cartoon. The developer was able to get the game live in time for the film’s opening and an early in-game quest prompts players to Like The Smurfs film fan page on Facebook. Additionally, pop-ups displaying the film’s poster appear at least once per gameplay session at time of press.

The film came out in North America on July 29 and so far has received negative reviews while taking in over $100 million in domestic total box office. The film is just now entering international release, though the game is live in several countries already. Ubisoft says it has not engaged in ad spend of any kind and that all of Smurfs & Co.’s growth is due to the enduring popularity of the franchise and from cross-promotion with the film and other Ubisoft Facebook games. As an aside, Castle & Co.’s MAU and DAU have shot up 193% and 266% respectively in the time since Smurfs & Co.’s launch.

As far as social features go, Smurfs plays it safe with standard neighbor visits and giftable construction items. Monetization comes primarily in the form of premium buildings, decoration items, and full energy refill items available for Facebook Credits. Players can also purchase resources and building materials to speed up construction. A soft currency, Smurf Coins, is the primary means of purchasing most structures and decorations. A second soft currency, Smurfberries, is used to purchase low-level energy packs.

As for the future of the game, Ubisoft Active Game Manager Chong Ahn tells ISG that weekly updates will add new content to Smurfs & Co. even after the film exits theaters. He also says larger updates will introduce a daily bonus system, more areas to explore and expand into, and additional story elements around Gargamel’s Smurf hunt.

You can follow The Smurfs & Co.’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Wooga’s Magic Land is the Diamond Dash developer’s latest foray into fantasy world building/management titles. The game has been online in alpha since mid-July and was officially launched to coincide with the start of Game Developers Conference Europe earlier this week.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Magic Land currently has 152,101 monthly active users and 85,339 daily active users.

The title casts players as either a prince or princess of a small kingdom whose royal family has been kidnapped by a dragon. The plot eventually leads to some game world exploration once players have successfully built up their kingdoms to the point where they can expand into new areas of the map. Building up the kingdom involves constructing homes for villagers, which in turn need food in order to keep producing gold. Constructing homes is a multi-step process that requires specific resources — wood, wax, etc. — and a certain amount of energy per action. The food required to fuel gold production must itself be planted in fields purchased and placed by the player. There are a variety of crops to plant and harvest, as well as a wide selection of fanciful houses to build. Special decorations, or boosts, can be added to the kingdom in order to increase money and food production.

On occasion, monsters will enter the player’s kingdom and must be defeated. This is a simple process that involves clicking on them to attack, but it also costs the player energy. Defeating monsters rewards the player with gold, experience points and other inventory items, much like performing other tasks in the game. Gaining XP allows players to level up and earn rewards, including items, soft currency and hard currency.

Social aspects of Magic Land include bragging about accomplishments via the player’s Wall, sending and receiving gifts, and visiting friends’ kingdoms in order to help them harvest crops, collect gold, and so on. The game displays the player’s friends at all times along with their current player level.

Magic Land is monetized through the sale of both the hard currency, diamonds, and the soft currency, gold, in exchange for Facebook Credits. Many items in the game’s shop must first be “unlocked” through the spending of diamonds before they can be purchased. There are also items that can only be purchased with diamonds, such as energy refills.

You can follow Magic Land’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Editor’s Note: We’re not at Game Developers Conference Europe this week, but there’s lots of news coming out of the show, so we’re bringing you the highlights from the social and mobile games industry perspective.

Wooga Talks Social Games Appeal — Wooga CEO Jens Begemann explains the appeal of social games. He states that social games are looking to turn gamers into “FarmVille farmers,” but should instead seek an audience outside the subset of traditional gamers. Social games allows users to become absorbed into a world without a multi-hour time investment, at a low cost, and with a negligible learning curve.

Begemann also points out other elements of social games. For example, he notes that monetization through virtual items actually shows the most revenue in terms of speeding up game play: “Time is money even for social/casual players.” Additionally, he highlights the interaction levels between users: “Social games are parallel play. People want to play for themselves. Sometimes, they may walk up to the other and either help or destroy what the other has been doing.”

Richard Garriott: Mobile & Social Are “The Future of Games” –Game designer and founder of social developer Portalarium gave the final keynote address at GDC Europe in which he recaps the single player and MMOG eras of gaming. He also notes that playing with friends through social and mobile games is now the most rapidly evolving and important space for the games industry.

These games are free or cheap to acquire, easy to learn, and allow users to play with real world friends asynchronously, on their own time. Additionally, while early social and mobile games were “too simple,” the player base is growing to accept more and more complex activity.

i-Jet Media Unveils New Social Games Platform — During the Social Games Summit at GDC Europe, i-Jet Media revealed its new i-Jet Connect social platform. The platform is intended to consolidate social game development solutions and features the ability to quickly publish titles to both global and local social networks, manage traffic, and incorporate brand advertisements.

Papaya Mobile Tips on Social-Mobile Games — Papaya Mobile’s Oscar Clark spoke on design social games, providing ten tips on creating a successful social-mobile game. Highlighted by PocketGamer, the top tips include treating a game like an evolving service, analyzing what types of players are looking for what types of rewards, and ensuring that all users (free, paid, and “whales”) all equally enjoy the game in the way that they play it.

Ideal Time for Mobile Mergers and Acquisitions — It is the perfect time for mobile game studios to consider mergers and acquisitions, says Tim Merel of investment bank Digi-Capital. Though he states that merging or selling one’s company is not always the right choice for everyone, he does point out that global investments are not only accelerating, but that the mobile space is currently one with no truly dominant presence, yet is quickly expanding.

Public Funding — The independents of Yacine Salmi and Alexander Zacherl discussed a few interesting ways to acquire public funding for games development. As highlighted by Gamasutra, the big point made is that developers can find funding from non-game related funds for things like art or research (e.g. for a game engine). Doing so is advantageous, as it reduces exposure should a startup fail, but at the same time, developers do lose a bit of their independence.

Hot on the heels of GDC Europe is Gamescom, which kicks off today in Germany. Stay tuned for a roundup of social and mobile gaming news out of that conference.

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Tagged, Breaktime Studios, Ace Studios/Tetris Online, TinyCo, GREE International, Elti Solutions,   Aarki, King.com and Acquinity Interactive.

• Business Intelligence Analyst
• Software Engineer – Games
• Game Business Analyst
• 2D Graphic Artist
• Product Manager – Monetization
• Creative Director – Social Games
• Game Designer
• Art Director – Social Games

• Monetization Manager
• Gaming Software Engineer

• Web (PHP) Developer
• Senior Web (PHP) Developer
• System Administrator/Web Programmer
• Social Game Designer

• Data Analyst
• Product Manager
• User Acquisition Specialist
• Monetization Analyst

• Mobile Game Engineer
• Product Manager, Game Design
• LAMP (Game/Social Platform Backend) Engineer

• Senior Mobile Video Engineer
• Senior Software Engineer, Acoustic Signal Processing
• Senior Android Software engineer

• Director of Publisher Sales

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Zynga is currently in the process of migrating FrontierVille players to a new app ID that maintains the base game as-is while adding on a Pioneer Trail expansion that functions as a separate game. After just three full days, Pioneer Trail is at 3.1 million daily active users while FrontierVille is down 1.1 million users.

Taken as-is, this suggests that the migration is going well. Players logging into the original FrontierVille can see advertisements for Pioneer Trail on the loading screen. Once inside, they are prompted to try out Pioneer Trail and clicking the “accept” button takes them to a game install screen. Presumably, this is where some FrontierVille users might abandon the migration. Previous social game sequels found that players were reluctant to follow through on installing a new app once they’d been taking out of the gameplay experience with which they were familiar.

Zynga, however, seems to be doing a decent job getting players past this hurdle by explaining the benefits of migration on their forums and from within the base game itself. Observe the “Two games in one” promotion from the loading screen below:

After loading Pioneer Trail as an app, players entering the game default to the homestead view from FrontierVille. To reach the actual expansion gameplay, players must click a Travel button on the lower right hand corner of the screen. While on the trail, players can return to the homestead at any time by clicking a much-smaller Home icon that appears in roughly the same location.

Going forward, it’ll be interesting to see if total gameplay session time or sessions per day in FrontierVille increase as players attempt to interact both with the homestead and with Pioneer Trail. It could be that players only have enough attention for one gameplay type per day, or that certain players prefer one gameplay type to another. Zynga’s experience will likely serve as a model for other social game developers looking to extend the lives of their games on Facebook.

For more details on Pioneer Trail, read our review and keep your eyes peeled for the game on our weekly top 20 rankings sometime next week.

EA Playfish’s The Sims Social top this week’s list of fastest-growing games by daily active users with Happy Elements’ My Kingdom and Ubisoft’s The Smurfs & Co. rounding out the top three.

The sports titles we saw doing so well last week haven’t disappeared completely from this list as we see Premier League Fantasy Football’s Spanish-language version, Fantasy La Liga, appearing at No.19.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	The Sims Social	1,453,131	+1,392,265	+2,287%
2.	我的王國(My Kingdom)	649,374	+408,297	+169%
3.	The Smurfs & Co	1,181,223	+280,030	+31%
4.	Monster World	1,568,705	+175,247	+13%
5.	DoubleDown Casino	698,913	+130,768	+23%
6.	Magic Land	85,339	+81,644	+2,210%
7.	The Pokerist club — Texas Poker	322,233	+76,669	+31%
8.	Traveler IQ Challenge	120,028	+62,869	+110%
9.	Drink it up!	80,993	+52,366	+183%
10.	開心水族箱	1,517,528	+48,460	+3%
11.	水果忍者	43,093	+43,092	+4,309,200%
12.	Okey Oyna (KAMERALI)	108,082	+42,155	+64%
13.	胡萊三國	99,278	+31,230	+46%
14.	Ninja Saga	804,143	+26,496	+3%
15.	Pool Live Tour	474,237	+23,647	+5%
16.	Fashion Designer	404,244	+22,816	+6%
17.	BINGO Blitz	433,808	+21,984	+5%
18.	Çanak Okey	59,761	+20,027	+50%
19.	Fantasy La Liga	21,014	+17,488	+496%
20.	Tetris Battle	1,171,837	+17,145	+1%

Coming in at No.6 this week is the newly-announced Magic Land from wooga. The title debuted at Game Developers Conference Europe on Monday with wooga CEO Jens Begemann delivering a keynote speech on the mass appeal of social gaming. In Magic Land, players build and supply a thriving medieval fantasy land — not unlike Ubisoft’s Castle & Co. We’ll have a full review of the title for you later today.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

Rovio’s Angry Birds is still one of the top-rated apps on iOS and Android 20 months after its initial release, but it’s not clear how the game will fare on social platforms like Google+.

Right now, the game is available as one of the launch titles on the Google+ Games platform. Like many other titles in the lineup, Angry Birds is not currently monetized through the sale of virtual goods (in contrast to Edgeworld, which features full monetization identical to its Facebook version). However, the game prominently features ads for real-world Angry Birds merchandise, such as stuffed animals and shoulder bags. In its original mobile incarnation, Angry Birds made its money on a combination of one-time download sales for the full version, the sale of an “eagle” that let users pass difficult levels, and from advertising that appears in the free limited version.

As a social game, Angry Birds doesn’t do anything terribly different from the limited free version available on iOS and Android. The game is controlled via mouse where a click-and-drag motion launches birds toward the physics puzzle and scrolling with the mouse zooms in or out of the puzzle. The only “native” social game feature we observe is a friend gate after level 2 — where players cannot progress past a certain level without inviting new users to come and play.

For those unfamiliar with friend gates as a viral growth tool, a social game will sometimes present a user with a challenge that cannot be completed without the “help” of a certain number of friends. For example, in the recently-launched The Sims Social on Facebook, players need at least three friends to complete an addition to their virtual home. Players can choose from a list of all of their Facebook friends or from a limited list of friends that are already playing The Sims Social. The room becomes “complete” once three people have Accepted the invite. Facebook’s guidelines for developers limit the number of invites players can from a game per day.

As for potential monetization methods, it would make sense for Rovio to offer players a way to buy individual levels or premium levels. Rovio has already made use of platform-exclusive premium levels to incentivize players on new platforms, like the PlayStation Portable or the Web GL version of Angry Birds for Google Chrome, but not here. Additionally, there is precedent set by other arcade games that became “social” through the sale of special power-ups to increase scoring potential.

Google+ announced its Games platform last week.

Zynga reportedly bought another mobile social gaming company called Astro Ape Studios to bulk up its Android and iOS efforts.

When we first heard rumors of the deal yesterday, we reached out to Astro Ape Studios, which didn’t return requests for comment. Zynga also declined to comment. However, many of Astro Ape’s employees, including chief executive Chieh Huang, chief creative officer Christopher Cheung and chief technology officer William Fong, have all taken titles on LinkedIn at Zynga’s New York office.

Astro Ape’s titles like Dessert Heroes and Office Heroes have not been highly ranked on the overall top lists for the last few months so the price may not have been much more than the typical talent acquisition range. Office Heroes had some initial success last year, but it quickly declined afterward. Japan’s DeNA invested an undisclosed amount in Astro Ape last year.

> Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.

“Social stock market” Empire Avenue announced a $1.2 million round of funding today, led by Pandora investor Crosslink Capital. The money will go toward expanding the company’s team and into development on its virtual-currency-driven platform.

Other participants in the round include iNovia Capital and video game studio BioWare founders Drs. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. Empire Avenue was originally created by a team of ex-BioWare, Electronic Arts and MySQL employees.

Empire Avenue currently exists as a standalone website and as a Facebook application where users simulate a virtual stock market through social interactions and an intangible measure of online influence. Rather than being the classic “buy and sell your friends” app type that flourished in the early days of Facebook, Empire Avenue CEO Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana tells us that the app adds real value to users through integration with Facebook’s social graph. By participating in trading, he says, “the game will basically lead you into social media; it’s a great training tool as well as something to have a lot of fun with.”

Aside from functioning as a social tool, Empire Avenue is also positioning itself as a business tool for brand integrations. The market recently added branded “luxury” virtual items and Achievements as part of an integration with Xbox.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, the Empire Avenue Facebook companion app has 45,883 monthly active users and 36,324 daily active users.