Angry Birds Space takes Rovio's babies to the final frontier March 22

Where the Angry Birds are going, they won't need slingshots. What they will need, however, are space suits (and lots of oxygen tanks). Rovio has revealed Angry Birds Space, the next major mobile game in the Finnish game developer's storied franchise. Yahoo Games scored the details on the next Angry Birds adventure, which is set to hit unspecified (e.g. iOS and Android) mobile devices on March 22.

Fine, the Angry Birds will still use slingshots, but considering they're in space, we don't quite get why. At any rate, Angry Birds Space will have players fling the wingless birds with reckless abandon in zero gravity. Playing on these new planets will lead to interesting new play hooks, like slow-motion puzzles and "lightspeed" destruction, according to Yahoo.

Here's the clincher: Rovio has signed on both NASA and National Geographic as launch partners, so you can expect those floaty space physics to be spot on. The majority of Angry Birds staples will return, like the star rating system, but brand new birds will appear alongside the original crew. This time, however, those classic birds will have some new powers to try out.

Rovio looks at Angry Birds Space to be its biggest release since it hit iPhones in 2009, but we'd go so far as to say that this game is the developer's most important release. Angry Birds has experienced staggering growth, but Rovio has also promised to bring new play concepts to the table. Rovio will also go on an all-out media frenzy to accompany Angry Birds Space, so expect to see the game everywhere you go come March 22.

[Via PocketGamer]

Are you psyched for Angry Birds Space? Were you expecting some more different to come from Rovio, or is this right up your alley? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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Pioneer Trail Frontier Bulletin Board: Everything you need to know

Do you remember the Newsstand feature in Pioneer Trail (then FrontierVille)? This feature allowed to you complete favors for your real world friends, but ultimately fell by the sidelines as folks simply got bored with it (or, more likely, got tired of waiting for all of those extra pop-ups to appear when visiting friends). Well, apparently virtual friends are much easier to help than real life ones, as Zynga has taken another stab at the favor idea via a new Bulletin Board you can build on your Homestead.

This Bulletin Board triggers the launch of the Frontier Favors feature in your game. After it's built, you'll see bright orange exclamation points above the heads of your virtual friends (Granny, Bess, Doc and so on) that indicate that person has a favor to ask of you. You can also view all available favors by looking inside the Bulletin Board. But wait! You'll need to build it first, which requires the following parts:

10 Push Pins10 Cork Boards10 Colored Paper15 Wood Brackets15 Spare Lumber15 Pencils on a String
The Push Pins, Cork Boards and Colored Paper come from general news posts placed on your wall, while the other three items are earned through individual requests sent to your neighbors. After you start to accept favors, you'll find that the tasks vary between players, but are available on a daily basis (you can only have one favor active at once). Each favor goal that you accept will expire after two weeks, or you can simply dismiss a favor altogether if it comes with requirements that you don't want to complete. The only drawback here is that you won't receive that favor again, so if the prize was worthwhile, you might want to push through to the finish.

Once you finish a favor, you'll be rewarded with a prize that might include a new decoration for your land, a Mystery Animal Crate and so on. As an added bonus, you'll receive 5 Horseshoes for completing your very first favor (apparently, the folks at Zynga really wants this feature to take off and are willing to pay for that to happen). This comes through the only guaranteed goal that all users will receive (afterwards, the paths branch and players will experience different things).

Big Favors Place & Complete the Bulletin BoardObtain a FavorComplete a Favor
On top of receiving the 5 Horseshoes like we said above, you'll also receive 500 XP and 500 coins for finishing this goal. From there, you're on your own to accept and complete as many (or as few) favors as you'd like.

This apparently marks just the first event in Pioneer Trail to use what Zynga is calling the "Dynamic Quest System." We'll make sure to let you know if and when additional features use this "random" setup as well, so keep checking back with us.

What do you think of the Frontier Favors / Bulletin Board feature in Pioneer Trail? Will you complete a single favor just for the Horseshoes, or are you genuinely interested in this new feature? Sound off in the comments.

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New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Efficient Frontier, Involver, Vitrue, Wildfire and More

A variety of Facebook platform companies hired everything from interns to sales to operations to engineers this week. If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into next week’s post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s list of hires:

Efficient Frontier

Charlene Fernandez, Sales Executive – previously a student at London Metropolitan University.Guanghong Yang, Senior Software Engineer – formerly worked as a Software Engineer at The Fanfare Group.

Involver

Yagnik Khanna, Web Developer/Programmer Intern – studied at University of Waterloo.

Kontagent

Cindy Lee, Lead UI/Visual Designer – formerly worked a similar position at Cisco.

Nanigans

Robin Botto, Ad Ops Manager – formerly the Director of Account Management at Avenue100 Media Solutions.

Spruce Media

Kelsey Elliott, Ad Delivery Manager – formerly a freelance writer at The Chefs Director and a Director of Marketing at A Daily Apple.

Syncapse

Andrew McGrath, Senior Program Manager - formerly performed a simliar job at Hostopia.

TBG Digital

Wladyslaw Mettler, Python Developer at TBG Digital - formerly performed a similar job at Jamkit.Kenny Skelton, Client Service Director - formerly worked as Direct Channel Sales and Marketing Manager at Vodafone.

Vitrue

Kevin Race, Senior Client Delivery Manager – formerly worked as a Project Manager at Trivantis.Sarah Vabulas, Strategic Services Analyst - formerly a Social Media and Public Relations Coordinator at The Maximus Group.

Wildfire

Robert Williams, Inside Sales – formerly performed similar work at Confluence Media, Inc.

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Facebook Ads API Tool Efficient Frontier Acquires Page Management Tool Context Optional

Efficient Frontier, an established search and display advertising platform that offers a self-serve Facebook Ads API tool, has just acquired one of the oldest Page management companies, Context Optional. The reportedly $50 million deal will allow Efficient Frontier to help its existing advertising clients customize the Facebook Pages that their ads sometimes point towards, as well as secure advertising contracts with Context Optional’s clients.

Facebook ad spend is growing, Page management being commodified as free products are released, and the connection between advertising and Page management is deepening due to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad unit. These factors could inspire a trend where cash-flush Ads API companies purchase or partner with Page management companies.

Efficient Frontier is primarily a search and display ad company, but seeing the shift in spend towards social, it developed an Ads API tool so clients wouldn’t have to look elsewhere for a way to run their own large scale ad campaigns on Facebook. The tool’s multi-channel interface helps advertisers balance spend between search, display, and social to maximize returns.

However, by being rooted in slower evolving ad channels, Efficient Frontier is slightly less agile in responding to Facebook’s changes. For instance, Justin Merickel, the company’s VP of Marketing told us it added API access to Facebook’s social ad unit Sponsored Stories on April 16th, a month after private beta access to the Sponsored Stories API opened on March 8th. Other Ads API companies that don’t handle search or display reportedly only took a few weeks to include Sponsored Stories in their services, with TBG Digital reporting that it started running Sponsored Stories through the API as soon as March 16th, though we are awaiting confirmation on these dates from Facebook.

Some consider Efficient Frontier to be relatively weak Facebook advertising solution since the tool has social tacked on rather than as core of its targeting and optimization technologies. The need for more social expertise may have contributed to the company’s decision to make its first acquisition a dedicated social engagement tool.

Efficient Frontier CEO David Karnstedt acknowledged that it needed to close the social gap, saying “Our heritage is that we were early in optimizing search engine advertising for clients, so we wanted to expand our efforts exponentially with Context Optional, since social is different than search.”

Context Optional has been helping brands market themselves through Facebook since its launch in 2006. Its suite of apps, analytics tools, and viral marketing services for Facebook,Twitter, and LinkedIn have helped many Fortune 500 companies grow their fan bases, including Allstate, Ford, Microsoft, AT&T, eBay, and CNN.

Page management services were crucial to brands in the early days of Facebook because they didn’t understand how to get started, create apps, or derive value from the social network. However, with time, marketers have learned the ropes of the Platform and many small companies now offer cheap or free ways to create promotional apps. As core Page management services become commodified, the industry needs to find new sources of revenue — namely advertising.

There’s great potential for synergy between companies from the two industries. For instance, Context Optional’s team could create a new branded app for a client, which would then be promoted with ads purchased through Efficient Frontier. Page management companies also hold demographic and engagement data on users that can help improve ad targeting.

The acquisition is a smart move for Efficient Frontier. Context Optional’s Co-Founder and CEO Kevin Barenblat says the acquisition makes sense because”[it and Efficient Frontier's] respective clients are asking us for a comprehensive solution to both acquire and build relationships with their customers.”

This is probably the case with other Ads API and Page management companies too, so expect more acquisitions and partnerships in the space to emerge over the coming year. As we predicted in February, acquisitions of Page management companies are becoming more common as companies lacking them don’t want to fall further behind by taking months to develop their own.

Some Page management companies like Buddy Media, Syncapse and Vitrue have grown quite large and raised over $30 million, but still may be viable acquisition targets for the largest search and display ad services providers, or Ads API companies including TBG Digital, Blinq Media, AdParlor, and Spruce Media. There are also a host of medium-size companies such as Involver, and smaller companies such as Fan Appz, Brand Glue, Likeable Media, and iPlatform that could be acquired more cheaply to bring social tools and expertise to companies looking to break into social or expand their offering.

More information on the Page management and Ads API companies operating in the Facebook ecosystem can be found in the the Facebook Marketing Bible’s Facebook Marketing Service Provider Directory. It includes the areas of expertise, verticals covered, client lists, portfolio samples, news updates and contact information of organizations of all sizes who are marketing and advertising on Facebook.

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