More Bets on Virtual Casinos: Big Fish scoops up Card Ace
Casinos are the hottest real estate in today’s heady world of social gaming.
From Zynga to Caesars, deep-pocketed companies are increasingly looking to get a piece of the action. On Tuesday, Seattle-based Big Fish Games staked its claim, acquiring the maker of one of the most popular social casino games, Card Ace: Casino.
The deal, gives Big Fish a seat at the table of the fast-growing social casino market, where consumers connect with other players in real-time using their smartphones, tablets and PCs to play poker, blackjack, roulette and other felt-table classics. The parties are not disclosing the price of the acquisition.
The games are just for fun – gamers can’t actually win any money. But the house still makes out OK, since many players choose to spend real money buying additional virtual chips to supplement the pile of free chips they’re given to start off.
Social concepts, the company that developed Card Ace: Casino and whose backers include Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk, does not disclose its financial results, but the Card Ace app currently ranks among the top 10 grossing iPhone and iPad apps thanks to in-app purchases of virtual chips and other virtual goods.
For Big Fish, which is known for single-player games and which generated more than $180 million in revenue last year, casino games provide a perfect bridge into the world of social gaming.
“Casino games are a natural fit for social,” said Big Fish founder Paul Thelen in an interview with Reuters. “Very few people like to play casino games alone.”
from Paul Smalera:
The piracy of online privacy
Online privacy doesn’t exist. It was lost years ago. And not only was it taken, we’ve all already gotten used to it. Loss of privacy is a fundamental tradeoff at the very core of social networking. Our privacy has been taken in service of the social tools we so crave and suddenly cannot live without. If not for the piracy of privacy, Facebook wouldn’t exist. Nor would Twitter. Nor even would Gmail, Foursquare, Groupon, Zynga, etc.
And yet people keep fretting about losing what’s already gone. This week, like most others of the past decade, has brought fresh new outrages for privacy advocates. Google, which a few weeks ago changed its privacy policy to allow the company to share your personal data across as many as 60 of its products, was again castigated this week for the changes. Except this time, the shouts came in the form of a lawsuit. The Electronic Privacy Information Center sued the FTC to compel it to block Google’s changes, saying they violated a privacy agreement Google signed less than a year ago.
Elsewhere, social photography app Path was caught storing users’ entire iPhone address books on their servers and have issued a red-faced apology. (The lesser-known app Hipster committed the same sin and also offered a mea culpa.) And Facebook’s IPO has brought fresh concerns that Mark Zuckerberg will find creative new ways to leverage user data into ever more desirable revenue-generating products.
This is the way we’re private now. It’s ludicrous for anyone who loves the Internet to expect otherwise. How else are these services supposed to exist -- let alone make any money? Theft or misuse of private user data is a crime, certainly. But no social web app -- not one -- can work without intense analytics performed on the huge data sets that users provide to them voluntarily (you did read the terms of service agreement...right?).
And the issue compounds when people connect one site to another. By linking their Twitter to their Facebook to their Google+ to their Foursquare to their Zynga to their Instagram to their iOS, users are consolidating their lives, and in the process making them more attractive to marketers. While Facebook, Twitter and other services have made attempts to warn users about hitting the “connect” button, many of us hit that button with reckless abandon, without a thought of who’s slavering on the other side.
The reason social media and digital information companies want that data is because of what we refuse to give them: money. No one wants to pay for the privilege of chatting with their friends or using a coupon, and to this day, no one has to: Go ahead, ring their doorbell or pick up the free coupon book from your front stoop. But if you want to chat using Facebook or Gmail, or you want to buy a groupon for an 80 percent-off Botox service, you will have to tell those companies who you are. And those companies will use that information to tailor their offerings to you, increasing your value as a user and a customer. They will slice their data sets into a million different pieces and show those pieces to people -- advertisers -- who will pay them money for the privilege of using their service. They’ll use it to get to you.
This is an update on an old media model. Magazines and newspapers for decades could only guess at the readership of their product and the demographic of their customers. But now social and new media demand to -- and can -- know exactly who you are before they agree to let you use their free services. Even email newsletter services like the increasingly hot Thrillist -- which might innocuously start you on their service by asking only for your simple email address -- deploy click trackers, pixel trackers and other online data-gathering techniques to start to put together a picture of you as a user, both individually and in aggregate. A deceased magazine like Spy could only dream of that kind of intel.
It is utter rubbish to claim that we cannot have a better internet than the one we have right now. Most users simply do not really understand what and how much they have given up. And what has been given up unknowingly can be reclaimed. That is what laws are for.
Europe has a much better system, and much more privacy. And we can improve on that, without wrecking the essentials of the internet.
Corporate co-dependence: when good partnerships go bad
One of the biggest surprises in Facebook’s IPO filing was that it depended on game-maker Zynga for 12 percent of its sales last year.
In 2010, the online game company famous for “FarmVille” and “Words With Friends” nearly declared war with the social network over a change in Facebook’s policy involving credits — the currency Zynga players use to buy virtual goods. Facebook wanted to take a 30 percent cut of transactions.
Bing Gordon, a video game veteran, Zynga board member and partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, described the standoff during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in May as a Silicon Valley version of the Cuban Missile crisis, where Zynga was at one point prepared to walk away from Facebook.
Now that the importance of their relationship is out in the open, it is clear that it is the best interest of both companies to work together when it strikes a new agreement in 2015.
Zynga and Facebook are not the first mutually dependent companies which sometimes come to blows. Here’s a look at some famously antagonistic business pairings starring the likes of Microsoft and Intel, SAP and Oracle and Netflix and Hollywood.
(Click on the photo above for the slideshow)
Microsoft-Intel:
Zynga’s Pincus fights back against copycat accusations
Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, isn’t pleased with reports that Zynga is ripping off games from small developers so he is doing something about it–wielding his pen to write passionate manifestos to employees invoking Silicon Valley greats like Apple.
After a game developer accused Zynga of copying a game called “Tiny Tower”, Pincus sent a 60-line memo to employees to make sure his flock knows Zynga has done nothing wrong, (the memo was leaked to the blog VentureBeat and later obtained by Reuters).
“Google didn’t create the first search engine. Apple didn’t create the first mp3 player or tablet. And, Facebook didn’t create the first social network. But these companies have evolved products and categories in revolutionary ways.”
And just like tech heavyweights did not reinvent the wheel, neither does Zynga need to with its simple but addicting games.
“We don’t need to be first to market. We need to be the best in market … Zynga Poker, FarmVille, CityVille and Words with Friends, none of these games were the first to market in their category but we made them the most fun and social,” he said.
Pincus also shows reverence to video game history involving games where players build towers-”it’s important to note that this category has existed since 1994 with games like Sim Tower.”
His arguments are perfectly valid. It is just amusing that he is getting so worked up about claims his company is stealing ideas from a game called ”Tiny Tower,” and then later defending the authenticity of Zynga’s new Bingo game to VentureBeat.
Could Zynga gamble with friends?
Investors were salivating on Friday at the prospect of Zynga breaking into online gambling. The company said it is in “active conversations with potential partners” to try and figure out the market, which sent its shares up 7 percent.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department declared that only online betting on sports is unlawful, setting the stage for some U.S. states to legalize online gambling.
Melissa Riahei, general counsel at the online gaming company, U.S. Digital gaming, said Zynga would not be able to enter the $35 billion online casino market on its own. If Internet gaming is legalized, Zynga would have to partner with an operator that could get a license for Internet gambling, like a casino, and have to figure out which states it can work in.
Still, “the opportunity is huge. Zynga has a very good chance of being a big player in this market because of the player base it can bring”, she said.
Zynga has 30 million monthly players of its poker game and it could also could jump into gambling on the go–on a smartphone or tablet.
Paul Bettner, who leads the Zynga studio behind top mobile games like “Words with Friends” said he is monitoring the new industry closely but nothing has been decided yet.
“I can’t speak to whether there will be ‘A Gamble with Friends’ game in the future. I think some of those mechanics are interesting and could be very fun in mobile games. I am very intrigued by that,” Bettner said.
Tech wrap: Wikipedia, Google protest anti-piracy bill
The English homepage of Wikipedia went dark and Google’s search page ran the logo “Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the web!” in protest of legislation designed to stop copyright piracy but the free online encyclopedia says “could fatally damage the free and open Internet.” Big tech names including Facebook and Twitter declined to participate in protests of the House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s PROTECT Intellectual Property Act, despite their opposition to the legislation, unwilling to sacrifice a day’s worth of revenue and risk the ire of users.
European regulators will decide around the end of March whether to file a formal complaint against Google for misuse of its market position, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told Reuters. Until this point officials had been playing down expectations of an early conclusion to the informal investigation stage, although there still could be a long way to go. Antitrust investigations typically take several years.
EBay’s fourth-quarter profit jumped as the e-commerce company saw solid growth in its online marketplaces and an increase in transactions processed through its PayPal electronic payments business. The operator of the world’s largest online marketplace reported fourth-quarter net income of $2 billion, or $1.51 a share, compared with $559 million, or 42 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 35 percent to $3.38 billion.
Suspicion is growing that operatives in China, rather than India, were behind the hacking of emails of an official U.S. commission that monitors relations between the United States and China, U.S. officials said. U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said the roundabout way the commission’s emails were obtained strongly suggests the intrusion originated in China, possibly by amateurs, and not from India’s spy service, as previously thought.
Cellphone makers are set to struggle with slow sales growth this year as a weaker global economy discourages consumers from replacing older handsets. Fourth-quarter results are likely to show the slowdown under way. Apple’s long-awaited iPhone 4S and Samsung’s new, broad offering were likely the exceptions in an otherwise lackluster Christmas holiday season. Vendors are expected to report sales of around 142 million smartphones in the October-December quarter, up 42 percent from a year ago, according to a Reuters poll. But analysts said not everyone benefited. “We expect smartphone demand to have remained robust in the fourth quarter, but price erosion is intensifying. Profitability remains the crucial yardstick and it’s likely Apple and Samsung extended their lead,” said CCS Insight analyst Geoff Blaber.
Zynga said it bought four small mobile game companies for an undisclosed sum as the top maker of Facebook games seeks to expand its lineup on smartphones and tablets. The company’s top mobile executive David Ko told Reuters it had acquired German company Gamedoctors in December. Gamedoctors, based in Bielefeld near Hanover, makes the game ZombieSmash. The company also bought Page44 Studios, which is based in San Francisco, in September. That studio created the “World of Goo” game for Apple’s iOS platform. Zynga also acquired HipLogic, another San Francisco-based games company, in August. And Ko also confirmed Zynga purchased New York based Astro Ape Studios in August to develop new titles.
2DBOY created World of Goo in 2008, not Page44. Page44 simply helped port the game, but did not create it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Go o
Tech wrap: Is RIM circling the drain?
A months-long delay in Research in Motion’s new BlackBerrys and a dreary quarterly report sent RIM shares tumbling again on Friday and pushed some analysts to sound the death knell for the mobile device that once defined the industry.
Zynga shares opened as much as 10 percent above their offer price on Friday but then rolled back below the IPO price, showing that investors were still concerned about its dependence on Facebook and its growth prospects and that demand for hot tech IPOs may be waning.
The news has not deterred the creators of “Angry Birds,” who are said to be considering a stock market flotation in Hong Kong.
Staying with the creator of “FarmVille”, tech editor Peter Lauria, social media editor Anthony DeRosa and reporter Liana Baker spill the secrets to Zynga’s addictive gaming platforms.
Finally, TechNewsWorld is reporting that the U.S. Patent Office has granted Google a patent that covers the way in which cars could transfer from human-driver mode to autonomous-driving mode. Google has already conducted many driverless-car experiments, claiming it’s logged 200,000 miles of driver-free travel.
Tech wrap: RIM under fire ahead of results
Research In Motion faced renewed calls for a change in its leadership on Thursday, hours ahead of the quarterly results that could fuel criticism over the BlackBerry maker’s poor performance and sagging share price.
Jaguar Financial, an activist shareholder that has asked the BlackBerry maker to sell itself in whole or parts, once again called on two of RIM’s independent directors to push for a separation of the roles of chairman and chief executive.
Bloomberg reports that Zynga updated its initial public offering filing to expand on the risks of losing its chief executive officer after Google Chairman Eric Schmidt called him a “a fearsome, strong negotiator.”
Amazon.com said on Thursday it is selling more than one million Kindle devices a week, an unusual disclosure from the largest Internet retailer that comes in the wake of some negative reviews of its new Kindle Fire tablet.
Chris Maxcer of MacNews World has a look at the most momentous moments the past year at Apple.
Finally, U.S. soldiers facing emotional problems and contemplating suicide may soon be able to use a smart phone application to connect them to help.
But MS don’t need RIM
RIM is a software company, it live on SW, if it live on device manufacturing like MOTO, it has been died 10 death, that is why RIM quick down whenever their SW got problem, RIM got problem,
Device manufacturing need abilities like efficient process, low cost high performance design,….., when new hired employee introduce efficient concept to RIM, they lay them off, they don’t think those is important for a device producer in their mind, they dont want to change, they are software student from university,
google is a software company, they want hardware like moto, nokia, they dont want RIM, so will microsoft want RI
Tech wrap: Verizon feeds hunger for cable spectrum
Verizon Wireless plans to pay $3.6 billion for wireless airwaves from a venture of cable companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Comcast said that the deal represented a 64 percent premium over the $2.2 billion price the cable consortium paid in 2006 for the wireless spectrum being sold to Verizon Wireless.
U.S. Representative Edward Markey asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether software maker Carrier IQ violated millions of mobile phone users’ privacy rights. Carrier IQ makes software that companies including AT&T and Sprint install in mobile devices. It runs in the background, transmitting data that the software maker says its customer companies use to better understand their devices and networks.
Zynga, which plans to go public in two weeks, slashed its value by more than 30 percent to $9 billion, hoping to avoid the fate of other recent Internet IPOs that have disappointed after stock market debuts. Just two weeks ago a filing listed the Facebook game maker’s value, based on a third party assessment, at $14.05 billion. CEO Mark Pincus, a serial entrepreneur before he founded Zynga, will hold a class of shares with 70 times more voting power than the common stock that will be sold in the offering.
RIM booked a huge charge to write down inventories of its underwhelming PlayBook tablet, capping a dismal year with a steep profit warning that sent its shares tumbling. The company said it now no longer expects to meet its full-year earnings forecast, due to weak sales, the PlayBook writedown and a charge related to a damaging service outage in October. RIM’s U.S. traded shares ended the day down almost 10 percent.
Google won approval from U.S. antitrust regulators to buy online advertising company Admeld without any conditions, the Justice Department said.
Britain’s consumer watchdog said it is investigating Groupon UK after receiving complaints about how the daily-deal company was conducting its business. The Office of Fair Trading said it had been investigating Groupon UK, which offers daily deals on products from hotel stays to calendars, in secret since July.
Hard disk drive maker Western Digital, the worst hit by the Thai floods, could recover the market share it has lost to smaller rival Seagate Technology faster-than-anticipated, analysts said. Western Digital said it partly resumed production ahead of schedule and raised its outlook for the December quarter, prompting at least three brokerages to raise their price targets on the stock.
Is Zynga’s lead slipping on Facebook?
Electronic Arts, the second-largest video game company in the U.S., is stealing market share away from Zynga, the top dog in social games on Facebook, according to a new report on gaming behavior.
The report, released on Wednesday, is based on data that tracks the game play of more than 10 million users of Raptr, a website that automatically tracks its users’ video game activity on Facebook, consoles and PCs.
“EA has stolen 10 to 25 percent playtime from Zynga’s top games,” the report said.
Since the launch of Sims Social, EA’s Facebook game that has more than 66 million monthly active users, Zynga games such as FarmVille, CityVille and Empires & Allies have all lost players, the report shows.
To be sure, Zynga still dwarfs EA’s users on Facebook by more than 2-1 according to the website AppData.
The report comes a day after Zynga unleashed a barrage of games upon its rivals and gave a sneak peek of a mysterious new platform called “Project Z” that could reduce its reliance on Facebook.
One of the key finding is that EA succeeded in bringing players of the Sims franchise to its Facebook game “but more impressively they were able to capture market share from Zynga.” EA can also tap games from PopCap, the company it bought over the summer, such as Plant vs. Zombies and Bejeweled 3 to start releasing more games on Facebook, it said.
I agree with most of Zyngas moves..I can’t wait to play Karma Kingdom on my Ipad.
