Playfish excels with quality cross-platform games

Playfish excels with quality cross-platform games

In the dimly-lit world of social networking applications, companies tend to privately trash each other — often quite accurately. You hear things like “so-and-so always sends spammy invites” or “so-and-so has a suspect means of making money.” Social game developer Playfish is one of the… Continue Reading

Facebook platform developers could see $500M in revenue this year

Facebook platform developers could see $500M in revenue this year

A growing number of game makers on Facebook are making money from virtual goods — from poker chips to virtual clothes that users can buy or earn while playing gaming applications with their friends on Facebook. The combined ecosystem of these game developers and other… Continue Reading

Index Ventures infuses biotech and cleantech with $438.8M

Index Ventures infuses biotech and cleantech with $438.8M

Index Ventures just announced the closure of a $438.8 million fund intended to finance young biotechnology and cleantech portfolio companies. This is the sixth seed and early-stage fund the London-based firm has raised. Perhaps best know for its prescient investments in technologies like Skype, MySQL… Continue Reading

GamesBeat 09 preview: an interview with Facebook’s top gaming dude

GamesBeat 09 preview: an interview with Facebook’s top gaming dude

Our GamesBeat 2009 games conference on March 24 will explore the frontiers of gaming such as emerging gaming platforms. Facebook certainly qualifies as one of the hottest game platforms, now that it has 5,000 games. When the social network opened its platform up in 2007,… Continue Reading

Playfish raises $17 million for Facebook games

Playfish raises $17 million for Facebook games

Playfish, a social gaming company that has four of the top ten games on Facebook, has raised $17 million in funding.

The deal shows that the intersection of games and social networking remains a hot sector in spite of the weakening economy.

Playfish came out of nowhere… Continue Reading

Appssavvy snags $3.1M to connect advertisers, app developers

Appssavvy snags $3.1M to connect advertisers, app developers

Even though social networking companies serve tens of millions of users, there’s still bizarrely little advertising on the most popular sites. Many big agencies and brands have experimented, but they’re still looking for better ways to target the users they want.

The latest company hoping to… Continue Reading

CasualCafe to launch Facebook games for casual players

CasualCafe to launch Facebook games for casual players

CasualCafe has joined the ranks of game companies looking to make a fortune with games on Facebook. The Los Angeles company has launched its first two games, Spyde Solitaire and Burdaloo, for Facebook and is showing them off at Facebook’s F8 development conference.

Michael Scholz founded… Continue Reading

Playfish nabs $1M for social gaming

Casual gaming startup Playfish has raised $1 million on its way to full venture funding, following its $3 million seed raised earlier this year, according to VentureWire.

Playfish is based in London, but is looking to raise money from Silicon Valley firms. The company took the… Continue Reading

Playfish pulls in $3M seed for social gaming

Another social, casual gaming startup has brought in an initial investment for development, with several games lined up for release this year.

Playfish, which is based in London, already has a game called Who Has The Biggest Brain? on Facebook. It plans on monetizing through micro-transactions… Continue Reading