Inside Social Games

Aurora Feint Generates 5 Million iPhone Game Downloads – Distribution has always been a problem for iPhone developers, but in an effort to improve the odds on this problem, Aurora Feint created a special promotion on its OpenFeint social platform. The experiment was called the “Free Game of the Day Promotion,” and over the past four weeks has generated 5 million free game downloads.

The success has led to the launch of FreeGameoftheDay.com and will put free game offers at the forefront for a stated 15 million users. To draw a parallel on the success, an Aurora Feint partner in this endeavor, Origin8 creator of Space Station: Frontier, saw 160,000 downloads in a single day, and 1 million overall.

iPad Coming in April – We’ve talked a lot about the iPad in recent weeks, but now it looks like the masses will get to check things out for themselves soon enough. Apple announced today that the official launch of it’s new device is scheduled for April 3rd in the United States.

The Wi-Fi only model will be available first, with the 3G added later in the month. However, both will be eligible for pre-order come March 12th, with a cost ranging from $499 to $629, respectively for the 16GB version and $699 to $829 for the 64GB version.

Kwedit Raises $3.3 Million – Kwedit, the virtual goods payment site that allows users, 13 and up, to borrow money for virtual items and pay it back later, has, according to TechCrunch, gained another $3.3 million in a second round of funding led by Maveron. The company says it has signed six new merchants including VoIP provider, PokeTalk, an unnamed MMO, a test prep service, and a credit record protection service.

Peanut Labs Gets New Partners – Earlier this week, ad offer network Peanut Labs announced not one, but three new partnerships including the virtual world Meez, massively multiplayer online game publisher IGG, and virtual currency payment service Zeevex.  Each of the three are slated to integrate the networks collection of products in the near future.

Meez Promotes the Red Cross – One of Peanut Labs new partners, Meez, had news of its own, as the browser-based virtual world announced its promotion of the Red Cross throughout the month of March. The teen-oriented realm incorporates a virtual blood bank where avatars can visit and donate virtual blood in order to receive a limited edition Red Cross t-shirt in-game. Within the digital donation destination, however, will be links to the Red Cross website where they can learn more and even find out how to make real donations.

Assassin’s Creed II Multiplayer Comes to iPhone – Previewed, briefly, in early February, Ubisoft has finally released, according to appadvice, Assassin’s Creed II Multiplayer for the iPhone. Essentially a game of deadly hide-and-go-seek, players sneak about trying to kill each other over a Wi-Fi connection. Sadly, this means the game is not 3G compatible (yet), but as a launch promotion, the game is currently free, so that is quickly forgiven. The promotion was only slated at 48 hours and the game was released early in the week and is still free as of Friday. So… yeah, download it for free now while you can, as it will cost $2.99 soon enough.

Lord of the Rings Online Links Up to Facebook – Looks like the MMO Lord of the Rings Online is following World of Warcraft’s footsteps out of Middle Earth and into Facebook. Through a basic Facebook application, LOTRO Player Feed, users will be able to sign in using their My LOTRO account information and track/publish accomplishments to their feeds. This includes level ups, rank ups, quest counts, deed counts, and so on. It even tracks when you log on and off (don’t worry, it waits a while after each as to avoid spam). Also, all of the automatic publishing for each in-game achievement can be toggled on or off.

Exponential Entertainment Raises Funding for Hollywood Games – Earlier this week, Exponential Entertainment raised a round of funding from angel investors totaling $700,000, VentureBeat reports. This amount is in addition to another $1 million in convertible debt, but according to to Chief Executive Dave Long, the company is already in talks to raise a total of $3.25 million. Already, the company has Hollywood trivia games on HollywoodPlayer.com, Facebook, and the iPhone.

Heatwave Experiments with Platinum Life - Heatwave Interactive launched and interesting beta test on Facebook Wednesday. The game is called Platinum Life Web Edition and incorporates the music life into a role-playing title where players move from a nobody to a platinum hip-hop star. However, according to Anthony Castoro, the end goal is to create a massively multiplayer online version of the game with the ideas and lessons earned through the social network – and later MySpace and Twitter as well – being applied to the final rendition.

Booyah Introduces Location-Based Virtual Goods – Location-based iPhone app MyTown, from Booyah, has seen a tremendous amount of check-ins and claims more registered users than its competitors. Now it’s partnering with the Swedish clothing chain H&M, and it will be offering users location-sensitive virtual goods. When a users is near an H&M store, they will not only be able to buy unique virtual goods in the MyTown Store, but if they check-in, they’ll even get discounts and promotions for the actual items on sale in the store.

[via VentureBeat]

Hello Kitty Online Players Donate to Help Haiti – As more and more people send their help to Haiti, the folks over in Sanrio Land are doing their part as well with an event called Food for Friends 2 hosted by Sanrio Digital and Aeria Games within the Hello Kitty Online MMO. For each of the in-game items players donated to Aeria Games, the company would then donate to the Haiti relief efforts. Aeria has not released their total donations yet, but it did receive 534,358 donated items from players on their servers. Sanrio servers, however, garnered over 1.2 million donated items and donated US$ 18,038.30 to Doctors Without Borders.

gWallet Brings Virtual Offers & Currency to the Front Page – Social media monetization firm, gWallet, announced the introduction of the gWallet Brand Bar. Rather than bury potential offers in the back pages of social games, the Brand Bar’s intention is to allow social gaming offers to appear at the top of game screens on all pages, displaying offers the user can participate in, in order to earn virtual currency for their current game.

Playfish Sells 60M Pet Society Virtual Goods – This week, we caught a glimpse at how effective holiday virtual goods can become as Electronic Arts Vice President of Business Developments and Strategic Partnerships, Sebastien de Halleux, stated in Forbes that Playfish’s Pet Society had sold over 60 million virtual goods in the two weeks prior to Valentine’s Day.

Furthermore, it was noted that “tens of thousands” of flower bouquets were purchased through Valentine’s promotions (sponsored by ProFlowers) that earned players the game’s virtual currency. In fact, it was stated that half of all revenue generated in the said two weeks were from the bouquet sales, with total sales being 20% higher than February of 2009.

hi5 to Unveil New Game Developer Program at GDC – Described by the company as a “fundamentally different model for social games,” hi5’s Game Developer Program is something of an enigma. However, it does incorporate elements such as free marketing and promotion across the hi5 network, revenue share through both advertising and hi5 Coins (its virtual currency) usage, automatic game installs, and “super-charged” social channels with a dedicated game portal and promotional area for discovery.

Clarity is coming as President and CTO of hi5, Alex St. John has announced that details will finally be unveiled at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco on March 10, 4:15 – 5:15pm. The one hour session will be at the Moscone Center, Room 122, North Hall and open to all GDC pass holders, save student and audio passes.

Strategic Design Network Aquires Payout Hub – While the price and structure of the acquisition was not announced, social gaming startup, Strategic Design Network (SDN) has acquired the cash tournament company, Payout Hub. Now, the service that allows players to participate in skill-based tournaments for cash prizes (gambling, by some definitions) will be available for the coming line up of SDN titles.

In fact, SDN is already making use of Payout Hub’s capabilities with a new Payout Hub API for the iPhone. Installable in less than an hour, the integration of this API allows iPhone developers to quickly and easily incorporate cash tournament capabilities into their game, and allows users to effectively find all the tournaments currently running.

Chris DeWolfe is Going Shopping – Though virtually nothing is known at the moment, word on the street, via Gawker.com, is that MySpace co-creator and former CEO, Chris DeWolfe is going shopping — a rumor we heard something about last fall. However, this is no mere trip to the market, as he may be looking to buy a “social gaming platform play.” The time frame? It could be this weekend.

FarmVille on Android – While last week was host to Android’s new Flash 10.1 support, this week, the Android phones (Nexus One, to be precise) can now play the #1 Facebook title: Zynga’s FarmVille. A video of the FarmVille demo, in all it’s farming glory, can be found at Redmond Pie.

Hooked Media Launches Social Gaming Platform – In other social gaming news, startup Hooked Media announced it’s own social gaming launch: A social gaming platform dubbed Yoo-Mee. Through the platform, developers will be able socialize their games and embed them into a myriad of sites and devices (similarly to how Flash works). The new platform will fully support Facebook Connect, Twitter, and MySpace as well as two types of currency: Tokens, which are earned through play, and Gold, which must be bought.

eGames Sign License Agreement With Sonico.com – As of the 24th, PC, console, and web games developer eGames Inc. announced the signing of a content license agreement with Sonico.com, a Latin American social network. Evidently, it is a partnership that will bring social gaming to the network’s target audience with the first announced social game being a title called Burger Island(R).

April 20 | San Francisco

As we recently announced, Inside Social Apps 2010, our first conference on the future of monetization on social platforms, is happening April 20th in San Francisco, one day before Facebook’s official “f8″ event. We’re excited to see all of the developers and entrepreneurs from around the world that are planning to attend!

In addition to the 24 confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps 2010, including executives from all the largest developers on the Facebook Platform, we’re very excited to announce three more speakers today: Season Xu, Co-founder and COO at Five Minutes (makers of Happy Farm), Dave Etling, VP Product Development at InComm, and Jeremy Liew, Managing Director at Lightspeed Venture Partners. They will be joining our full list of speakers listed below.

• Atul Bagga, VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity
• Adam Caplan, VP Virtual Currency, Super Rewards / Adknowledge
  
• Renata Dionello, Chief of Staff to the CEO, eBay, and former Director of Consumer Business Development, PayPal
• Eric Eldon, Editor, Inside Facebook & Inside Social Games
• Dave Etling, VP Product Development, InComm
  
• George Garrick, CEO, Offerpal Media
• Vikas Gupta, CEO, Jambool
• Sebastien de Halleux, Founder and COO, Playfish, and VP Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, EA Interactive
• Ron Hirson, Co-founder and SVP Product, Boku
• Nick Lawler, Managing Director, Maverick Capital
• Keith Lee, Co-founder and CEO, Booyah
• Jeremy Liew, Managing Director, Lightspeed Venture Partners
  
• Vish Makhijani, COO, Zynga
• David Marcus, CEO, Zong
• Lisa Marino, CRO, RockYou
  
• Dave McClure, Investor, Founders Fund Angel and fbFund Incubator
• Rex Ng, Co-founder and CEO, 6waves
• Jason Oberfest, VP Social Applications, ngmoco
• Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga
• Shervin Pishevar, Founder and Executive Chairman, SGN
• John Pleasants, CEO, Playdom
• Keith Rabois, VP Strategy and Business Development, Slide
• Peter Relan, Executive Chairman, CrowdStar
• Justin Smith, Founder, Inside Network
• Kavin Stewart, CEO, Lolapps
• Jay Weintraub, Founder, LeadsCon
• Season Xu, Co-founder and COO, Five Minutes

More speakers and a full agenda will be announced shortly.

Finally, a limited set of “early admission” tickets is now available through Friday at a special price of $299. This price will change after Friday, and space will be limited, so we encourage you to register now.

Inside Social Apps 2010 – April 20th in San Francisco

Three years after the Facebook Platform launched in 2007, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry. Today, social games monetizing through virtual goods have quickly become one of the hottest sectors of technology and entertainment, both in the US and around the world. Where are social apps going, and who is leading the way?

Inside Network is proud to announce our first conference on the future of monetization on social platforms: Inside Social Apps 2010, happening April 20th in San Francisco, is bringing together the world’s leading entrepreneurs all in one place to discuss the future of social applications and games monetizing through virtual goods.

This will be an in-depth one day event geared toward developers on Facebook, MySpace, and the iPhone, senior executives, and investors. At Inside Social Apps 2010, founders and CEOs of the top social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies will be tackling the key issues facing the industry. We’re hosting it one day before Facebook’s “f8″ event in San Francisco, so this will be an excellent opportunity to learn about the key issues facing the future of the Facebook Platform and beyond before Facebook’s official event.

Register Now

A limited set of “early admission” tickets is available through Friday at a special price of $299. This price will change after Friday, and space will be very limited, so we encourage you to register early.

From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on April 20th in San Francisco!

In November, global games publisher and developer Merscom said that it was looking for more beyond the casual space and into the social scene. Not to long ago, the company gave us a first look at the alpha rendition of its new social Facebook title, The Crazies Tower Defense. Based on the upcoming movie, the app has been deemed, by the developer, ready as ever to be seen by public eye as Merscom has more 137,000 monthly active users, according to AppData.

In a nutshell, the film is about a toxin that gets into the water supply of a small Iowa town – when is it not a small Midwestern town? – that drives its victims insane before killing them. The few sane people remaining must band together to survive and that’s where the game comes in.

Already we see Merscom’s casual roots appear in this application with its “tower defense” title. As one of the older, and more common forms of casual games, it is a fun genre, but rarely original. Nonetheless, it looks like the developers are more than aware of such issues, as this defense app has a few key differences to make it feel a bit different than the sea of others.

Unlike the hundreds of other tower defense games, The Crazies does not give the user a set path that the enemies will follow. When they start the game, they are basically told, “This is your house. This is where bad guys come from. Enjoy.” Okay, yeah, there are tutorial prompts too, but you get the point. Regardless, between the player’s house and the alleyway where Crazies spawn from, there is nothing but a big open field to start out with (there are other, unlockable maps), and it’s up to the player to build a path – with bullets.

Starting with basic pistol wielding soldiers, users plant them down in little sandbagged bunkers to automatically shoot at passing enemies. With all tower defense games, this first “tower” has limited range, damage, and no area of effect (it can only hit one enemy at a time). Luckily, the game also grants new players with a slightly-better shotgun solider and some sandbag barricades (which are used to block off where enemies move) as well.

As Crazies die, cash – referred to as “Dollars” in this game – is automatically put in your wallet, with the occasional stack of money dropping on the playing field and needing to be picked up with a click. This is your in-game currency in the sense that it is used to purchase new soldiers and ammunition during battle.

Yes, you have to buy ammunition. This is one of the other interesting elements to The Crazies Tower Defense. The more towers you have, the more bullets you use, and if you run out…. Well, let’s say it won’t end well. It truly is a simple, but interesting feature though, as it adds a bit of chaos, urgency, and resource management to the game. Of course, if you need more Dollars to afford more, you can always buy a nest egg’s worth with the virtual currency, Gold.

Purchasing Gold is fairly standard, with offers, PayPal, etc, but what makes it worth buying is that you need it to buy new soldiers (snipers, mortars, etc.) at the weapon shops as well as upgrades for them. Thankfully, Gold is earned, slowly, through in-game means (killing Crazies), so a player is never forced to make a purchase in order to continue playing.

As a social game, yet another difference puts this app over most other tower defense titles. Beyond simple leaderboards and wall posts, the game has a handful of achievements for users to try and accomplish, as well as the ability to visit a friend’s map layouts, and even gifting. Nothing says “Be My Friend” like a sack of bullets, no?

Tower defense games are an enjoyable lot, so there isn’t a whole lot to complain about here other than minor usability issues. Honestly, the only true irritation was that the price of a soldier was not displayed upon a mouse-over. Instead, you had to click it and view its entire set of stats (in a different part of the screen) to see the cost; hardly intuitive when it is grayed out (because you don’t have enough money) or time effective when there’s about 9000 Crazies at the front door. On the other hand, the game did feel a bit easy, so perhaps the latter wasn’t that big of a deal after all.

Regardless, The Crazies Tower Defense does make a few nice changes to a pretty tired genre, and we’re interested to see how effective the game is at promoting the film.

Winter Olympic fans who may not be able to hit the streets of Vancouver to observe the games can at least play the official video game on Facebook.

Sega’s Vancouver 2010 Official Minigame on Facebook allows the user to “compete” in sports played during the winter games by using the arrow buttons on their keyboard. The four sports — snowboard cross, giant slalom, ski jumping and short track speed skating — allow you to compete with your friends, others in your country and players all over the world. Winners in the game may be awarded gold, silver or bronze medals.

The app is constantly asking users to invite their friends to play, as well. Once you’ve completed a game the app asks you to publish the results to your Wall so all the friends in your network can see you played the game. The ever-present faces of your friends follow you through your game trials, too.

The game on Facebook has grown steadily recently and currently has just over 14,500 monthly active users. The game is the Facebook version of games made for Xbox 360, PCs and PlayStation 3 and when played at olympicvideogames.com allows the winners of gold medals to enter into a contest for prizes.

When a user begins playing the game you’re asked to select a country and invite your friends to play; the game also shows your individual world ranking, country ranking and any medals you have won in the game.

To the sound of alternative-style video game music you’re asked to select a difficulty level — normal, hard or expert — and may elect to see a tutorial before playing. Once you finish navigating the course of your sport and arrive at the finish line, the crowd cheers you (no matter how badly you play).

April 20 | San Francisco

As we announced two weeks ago, Inside Social Apps 2010, our first conference on the future of monetization on social platforms, is happening April 20th in San Francisco, one day before Facebook’s official “f8″ event. We’re excited to see all of the developers from around the world that are planning to attend!

In addition to the initial set of 20 confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps 2010, we’re also excited to announce three more speakers today: Keith Lee, Co-founder and CEO of Booyah, Ron Hirson, Co-founder and SVP Product at Boku, and Lisa Marino, CRO of RockYou. They will be joining our full list of speakers listed below.

• Atul Bagga, VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity
• Adam Caplan, VP Virtual Currency, Super Rewards / Adknowledge
  
• Renata Dionello, Chief of Staff to the CEO, eBay, and former Director of Consumer Business Development, PayPal
• Eric Eldon, Editor, Inside Facebook & Inside Social Games
• George Garrick, CEO, Offerpal Media
• Vikas Gupta, CEO, Jambool
• Sebastien de Halleux, Founder and COO, Playfish
• Ron Hirson, Co-founder and SVP Product, Boku
• Nick Lawler, Managing Director, Maverick Capital
• Keith Lee, Co-founder and CEO, Booyah
  
• Vish Makhijani, COO, Zynga
• David Marcus, CEO, Zong
• Lisa Marino, CRO, RockYou
  
• Dave McClure, Investor, Founders Fund Angel and fbFund Incubator
• Rex Ng, Co-founder and CEO, 6waves
• Jason Oberfest, VP Social Applications, ngmoco
• Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga
• Shervin Pishevar, Founder and Executive Chairman, SGN
• John Pleasants, CEO, Playdom
• Keith Rabois, VP Strategy and Business Development, Slide
• Peter Relan, Executive Chairman, CrowdStar
• Justin Smith, Founder, Inside Network
• Kavin Stewart, CEO, Lolapps
• Jay Weintraub, Founder, LeadsCon

More speakers and a full agenda will be announced shortly.

Finally, a limited set of “early bird” tickets is now available through Friday at a special price of $279. This price will change after Friday, and space will be limited, so we encourage you to register now.

Inside Social Apps 2010 – April 20th in San Francisco

Three years after the Facebook Platform launched in 2007, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry. Today, social games monetizing through virtual goods have quickly become one of the hottest sectors of technology and entertainment, both in the US and around the world. Where are social apps going, and who is leading the way?

Inside Network is proud to announce our first conference on the future of monetization on social platforms: Inside Social Apps 2010, happening April 20th in San Francisco, is bringing together the world’s leading entrepreneurs all in one place to discuss the future of social applications and games monetizing through virtual goods.

This will be an in-depth one day event geared toward developers on Facebook, MySpace, and the iPhone, senior executives, and investors. At Inside Social Apps 2010, founders and CEOs of the top social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies will be tackling the key issues facing the industry. We’re hosting it one day before Facebook’s “f8″ event in San Francisco, so this will be an excellent opportunity to learn about the key issues facing the future of the Facebook Platform and beyond before Facebook’s official event.

Register Now

A limited set of “early bird” tickets is available through Friday at a special price of $279. This price will change after Friday, and space will be very limited, so we encourage you to register early.

From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on April 20th in San Francisco!

Startup thebizmo recently launched a new Facebook role-playing game called Hit or Not: It’s designed to give users the experience of running their own record label. The developers are hoping to match the widespread success of other Facebook apps like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, but in order to help real-life musicians.

The artists in the game are genuine, and your efforts to help them in the game could lead to online sales and more recognition among Facebook users. For the sake of all those starving musicians out there — and because of the music industry’s financial troubles — we’re especially interested to see this sort of experimentation.

Hit or Not gives Facebook users a chance to play music mogul by allowing players to rank songs in a Showcase based on how they think other players like or dislike them. The closer they get to hitting the average ranking — a sliding scale between 0 and 100 — the higher their Hit Spotter Rating climbs. The ultimate goal is to reach a rating of 90% or higher, which is fairly difficult as the score will rise and fall with each ranking.

As players listen to the songs, they can also decide to sign the artists if they feel the song will rise in popularity. This is one of the quickest ways to build your bank roll, measured in Hit or Not dollars (HN$). As songs become more popular, their value increases; players can then trade their songs or sell them, kind of like a virtual stock market for music.

For the artists, Hit or Not is a way to have their music heard. You aren’t going to have any big name bands or songs on the Top 40 come through your Showcase for a ranking; the bands and artists currently on Hit or Not don’t have contracts with major labels or songs in heavy rotation on your local radio station. But there is the potential of songs in the game giving these budding artists much-needed exposure. Players are given the option of purchasing MP3’s of tracks that they like and want to put in their permanent collection. Actually purchasing songs also translates into added clout in the game — as developers put it, money speaks louder than words.

The music Showcase runs on a “battery” that only allows players to listen to a limited number of songs before having to wait a few hours to let the meter recharge. Players can spend real dollars to add to their battery capacity, thus giving them more of an opportunity to rank songs, sign artists and move up the ranks. If players want to add to their virtual dollars quickly to sign high-profile artists to their label or buy more popular songs, they can also turn real dollars into the HN$ currency to get a leg up on the competition.

Thebizmo is still adding layers to the game, it’s aiming to mirror the world of the notoriously cut-throat music industry — actions like bribes and shady contracts. The attention to such detail can be attributed to the fact that the startup is run by a team with music industry experience that touts its company as being formed by musicians, for musicians. Artists looking to have their music be a part of the game can do so through thebizmo site.

“ScamVille” Lawsuit Dropped Against Facebook: Rebecca Swift has withdrawn her potential class-action lawsuit against the social network, although she has not yet dropped her charges against Zynga. Both were in court over scams that ran on offer walls in social games. More on MediaPost.

God of War III Rages into 7-Eleven: The latest game to make use of virtual goods is the heavily anticipated console (PlayStation 3) title, God of War III. Though the game doesn’t release until mid-March, marketing in the form of Slurpee cups will be starting on February 1st. Each cup will grant the consumer a special code that will allow them to download various content such at behind-the-scenes videos, animated Kratos themes, and special armor usable within the game.

Peanut Labs Announces 11 More Publisher Partners: Peanut Labs Media, provider of monetization services via surveys, offers, and direct payments, announced this week 11 new social publisher partners. The list includes Aeria Games, Backstage Technologies, Blue Frog Gaming, Challenge Online Games, Inc., CyberStep, Gamepot USA, Inc., Large Animal LLC, Ray Flame Entertainment, Inc., SmallWorlds, Vogster Entertainment, and Zeevex. Each new partner will have access to the myriad of monetization methods Peanut Labs offers as well as making use of the turnkey platform’s sales logistics, customer support, currency conversions, optimizations, and inquiry resolutions.

Adobe Plans for iPad: Currently, one of the biggest concerns with Apple’s new iPad is that it imposes restriction that currently disallow users to access Flash-based content on the web. Frankly, this is a big issue considering that Flash content makes up most of the internet nowadays. However, Adobe’s Flash blog states that they and about 50 other partners in “the Open Screen Project are working to enable developers and content publishers to deliever on any device. ” Hopefully, this means we’ll be able to use Flash on the iPad sooner rather than later. [image via The Flash Blog]

Microsoft Downplays Virtual Currency: Despite the social movement for Microsoft, Wednesday played host to the announcement that the company would be downplaying the role of its Xbox Live virtual currency, Microsoft Points. Apparently, a number of users have been complaining about the Point pricing system, calling it “misleading.” To mitigate the issue, Microsoft will be displaying the real world currency (based on location) in tandem with the virtual currency price.

Gowalla Grants User-Generated Content: One of the key features of the location-based iPhone application, Gowalla is the prospect of trips. In a nutshell, players would have to visit various locals in order to complete a “trip” and would earn corresponding digital “pins” as a reward. However, most of these required users to go out of their way. In light of that realization, Gowalla announced a new feature that would allow it’s players to create their own trips using locations they regularly visit. Should the trip prove popular, Gowalla will promote it based on “the quality and relevancy of the trip, [and] the number of people who have completed the trip.” Afterwards, participants will be given their own custom, in-game pin artwork as a reward.

Motally Brings Mobile Analytics to iPad: Third party developers aren’t wasting any time with Apple’s new iPad. Just Thursday, mobile analytics firm, Motally announced that it will be bringing its services to the iPad. Already, it’s platform allows publishers to collect data and create analytic reports on the usage of their applications on the iPhone, but with the expanded service will now also be able to access said data through the iPad. Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg as Mottally has stated that intends to support the iPad SDK once available.

Loopt to Spin Location-Based Apps in a New Way: A new location-based iPhone app called LooptCard from Loopt may be coming soon. Using the same type of technology as apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla, this title is adding one more step to the check-in process with real world, vendor deals. Yes, these will be location based deals, but more than that Loopt is looking to get vendors to incorporate their game-like ideas of only offering deals as rewards for doing certain tasks or checking in at certain times of day. In addition to these new ideas, LooptCard is also planning, according to TechCrunch, to make direct use of Facebook’s social graph. [image via TechCrunch]

C64 for iPhone Emulator Gets a Little Social: For all those classic game lovers, the Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone is getting a little bit more social through the use of OpenFeint. Games will be receiving social features such as global leaderboards and/or achievements. Updated games within the emulator include Jupiter Lander, Lemans, Artic Shipwreck, Uridium, Nebulus, and Paradroid.

EA Considers Building or Buying Facebook Sports Apps: “We are learning an awful lot about a very different type of game experience than we are used to doing,” head of EA Sports Peter Moore tells Reuters. “You’re seeing a focus in our M&A activity being on companies that will enhance our digital strategy.”

April 20 | San Francisco

2007 was the year social applications were born. With the launch of the Facebook Platform, and soon after similar platforms from MySpace and other social networks, developers worldwide could leverage the social graph to create new kinds of social experiences never before possible. Three years later, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry.

Now, in 2010, social games monetizing through virtual goods have quickly become one of the hottest sectors of technology and entertainment, both in the US and around the world. Where are social apps going, and who is leading the way?

Inside Social Apps 2010 – April 20th in San Francisco

Inside Network is proud to announce our first conference on the future of monetization on social platforms: Inside Social Apps 2010, happening April 20th in San Francisco, is bringing together the world’s leading entrepreneurs all in one place to discuss the future of social applications and games monetizing through virtual goods.

This will be an in-depth one day event geared toward developers on Facebook, MySpace, and the iPhone, senior executives, and investors. At Inside Social Apps 2010, founders and CEOs of the top social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies will be tackling the key issues facing the industry. We’re hosting it one day before Facebook’s “f8″ event in San Francisco, so this will be an excellent opportunity to learn about the key issues facing the future of the Facebook Platform and beyond before Facebook’s official event.

Who Is Speaking?

We’re excited and honored to announce the following initial set of 20 confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps 2010:

• Atul Bagga, VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity
• Adam Caplan, VP Virtual Currency, Super Rewards / Adknowledge
  
• Renata Dionello, Chief of Staff to the CEO, eBay, and former Director of Consumer Business Development, PayPal
• Eric Eldon, Editor, Inside Facebook & Inside Social Games
• George Garrick, CEO, Offerpal Media
• Vikas Gupta, CEO, Jambool
• Sebastien de Halleux, Founder and COO, Playfish
• Nick Lawler, Managing Director, Maverick Capital
• Vish Makhijani, COO, Zynga
• David Marcus, CEO, Zong
• Dave McClure, Investor, Founders Fund Angel and fbFund Incubator
• Rex Ng, Co-founder and CEO, 6waves
• Jason Oberfest, VP Social Applications, ngmoco
• Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga
• Shervin Pishevar, Founder and Executive Chairman, SGN
• John Pleasants, CEO, Playdom
• Keith Rabois, VP Strategy and Business Development, Slide
• Peter Relan, Executive Chairman, CrowdStar
• Justin Smith, Founder, Inside Network
• Kavin Stewart, CEO, Lolapps
• Jay Weintraub, Founder, LeadsCon

More speakers and a full agenda will be announced shortly. Keep an eye on InsideSocialApps.com for more information.

Register Now

A limited set of 20 “early announcement” tickets is now available at a special announcement price of $149. This price will change when these first 20 tickets are sold out. Space will be very limited, so we encourage you to register early.

From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on April 20th in San Francisco!

2009 will be remembered as the year that casual gaming stormed social platforms and changed the way millions of people socialized with friends online. With an up-to-$400 million acquisition of Playfish by Electronic Arts, hundreds of millions of dollars in venture investments, and some of the highest engagement numbers that online entertainment has ever seen, social games are now impacting businesses across the media landscape. It’s become clear that there are substantial opportunities for social game developers with virtual goods revenue models, but the market is still evolving rapidly.

Get the Annual Membership Get Annual Membership (Includes Report + 3 Additional Quarterly Issues): $2,495 OR Buy Single Report: $995

That’s why I’m excited to release today a new exclusive original research report with co-author Charles Hudson in our Inside Virtual Goods series that is exclusively focused on the future of the social gaming market, entitled Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2010.

How big is the market, and where will social gaming go in 2010? How will existing players fare as Facebook shifts the social gaming landscape, and larger and more sophisticated players enter the market? Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2010 provides deeper insight into social game monetization, development, customer acquisition, and the key questions facing the space in 2010 than you’ll find anywhere else.

About the Report

Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2010 gives you an inside view of the future at this critical juncture in the intersection of social networking and online games. The big picture? We estimate that the US virtual goods market will reach $1.6 billion in 2010, and that social gaming market will contribute $835 million of that total this year.

We have compiled months of original research from dozens of top executives and entrepreneurs from all parts of the social gaming ecosystem to produce eye-opening source data and analysis that is not available anywhere else. At over 140 pages, Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2010 takes the closest look at the present state of social games and the future of what’s shaping up to be a very fundamentally strong and profitable industry.

What We Cover

1. Emerging Social Game Development and Studio Models – There is an emerging consensus around how social game developers are choosing to organize themselves for game development. How do small, medium, and large developers organize their teams? What do development cycle times for original titles and “expansion packs” look like? What is the role of testing and metrics in the development process?
2. Social Game Design and Mechanics – The emergence of a few key game genres with proven mechanics and monetization have spawned dozens of fast followers. Understand how publishers are continuing to innovate as we head into 2010.
3. Monetization Data and Payment Trends – Now that developers have proven the virtual goods model, what are ARPUs really like for different game genres? What is the lifetime value of users, and how long do players stick around? We take an in depth look at monetization methods and rates, and shed light on where payments are headed in the coming quarters. One more note on monetization – you may be wondering about everything you’ve heard about offers and alternative payments for virtual goods. We cover:
   • The offers ‘scandal’ and what will it mean going into 2010
   • Changes that advertisers and payments companies have – and haven’t – made
   • How both direct and alternate payment methods are most likely to grow or contract in the coming year.
4. Customer Acquisition and Marketing Trends – As the social gaming landscape has evolved over the past two and a half years, so have the ways that developers acquire and retain new users. How have user acquisition costs changed, and what do Facebook’s changes spell for the future of the marketing funnel? We take an in depth look at data and trends.
5. Facebook’s Platform Changes, Credits, and What’s In Store for the Future – Just when social game developers were settling in, Facebook announced major adjustments that will dramatically alter the way social games reach users through Facebook. Continued change is likely – what will it be, and how will it impact the industry? In addition, as Facebook rolls out its much-discussed Credits currency, how will monetization and the payments landscape be affected? Finally, will we see another dominant platform emerge? Our overview covers these developments, their impact on the industry, and what else is in store.

What you get

In addition to our deep dive into key aspects of the social gaming ecosystem, the report also offers extended coverage on:

• A brief history on the evolution and growth of this space in the US, including a description of all key players and how they rose to the top.
• Total social gaming market size estimates for 2010, including estimates on the “big three” developers.
• Our take on the key issues facing the growth of social gaming, including our outlook and projections for 2010.

See the full table of contents below:

Table of Contents

Appendix of Related Companies includes: 51.com, 6Waves, Activision, AddictingGames, AdNectar, AdParlor, Amazon, AOL, Apple, Atari / Cryptic Studios, BigFish Games, BigPoint, Blizzard, Boku, Boomerang Networks, Crowdstar, DeNA, DoubleDing, Digital Sky Technologies, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Firecue, Friendster, Gambit, Gameloft, Glu, GMG Entertainment, Google, GratisPay, Gree, Green Patch, gWallet, hi5, InComm, Kaixin001, Kongregate, Live Gamer, LOLapps, Microsoft, Mixi, MSN, MySpace, Nexon, ngmoco, Offerpal Media, OpenFeint, Orkut, PayPal, Peanut Labs, Playdom, Playfirst, Playfish, PlaySpan / Spare Change, Pogo, PopCap Games, QZone, Real Networks, RenRen / Xiaonei, RockYou, Serious Business, SGN, Shanda, Social Hour, Social Reach, SocialGold / Jambool, SponsorPay, Super Rewards / Adknowledge, SupersonicAds, Target, Tatto Media, Tencent, The9, TokenAds, TrialPay, Twitter, Ubisoft, Viacom, VKontakte, Yahoo, Zong, Zynga

More Data, More Actionable Insights

In 2009, social games began to show what kind of value can be created on top of social networks. 2010 will be an even more important year.

Social gaming, powered by virtual goods, is this year’s industry to watch. If you’re involved, or are considering jumping in, Inside Virtual Goods will be one of your most important tools.

One year of original data and exclusive in-depth reports delivered on a quarterly basis is $2,495 and contains:

• A detailed overview of the current state of the industry
• Specific estimates on market size by segment
• Diagnosis of key opportunities and issues by segment

Get The Annual Membership

Get Annual Membership (Includes Report + 3 Additional Quarterly Issues): $2,495

OR Buy Single Report: $995

The annual membership, which includes the report and three additional quarterly updates, is USD $2,495. Alternatively, you can just download this report for USD $995.