Facebook partners with mobile billing provider Bango

U.K. mobile billing and analytics provider Bango announced today it signed a deal “to provide payment services to Facebook.”

The arrangement could be part of an upcoming effort to monetize Facebook’s mobile platform. The social network has 425 million monthly active mobile users but so far does not generate “meaningful” revenue from this area, according to its filing for an initial public offering. Facebook might have tapped Bango to help it process payments for apps, virtual goods or other mobile transactions.

Bango did not reveal the terms of the agreement. Facebook, which is in a mandated “quiet period” after filing for an IPO, did not comment on the partnership.

Bango provides carrier-billing services for Research in Motion and Opera’s app stores. This means mobile users are able to pay for purchases on their phone bills rather than a credit card. Many expect the company will to do the same for Amazon’s App Store for Android, following news of a partnership in December 2011.

Facebook opened its mobile platform to third-party developers in October 2011. It currently uses Boku to process mobile phone payments in HTML5 games like CityVille. This is only possible in the mobile web version of Facebook, not native applications because Apple and Android take 30 percent of in-app transactions on their platforms.

The Financial Times notes that Bango is aligned with Facebook’s movement toward a browser-based mobile platform. Following rumors of Facebook’s “Project Spartan” in June 2011, Bango CEO Ray Anderson wrote:

Bango technology has been optimized for browser deployment, and we see the browser as a great platform to enable truly explosive growth of mobile by making apps less dependent on the handset operating system. If you want to share an app or service with others, it makes more sense to mail or tweet out a link to a web app than to try to get your friends to download apps! It seems like Facebook may have the same vision [...]

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Offer provider TrialPay raises $40M and picks up a new strategic investor with Visa

TrialPay, the offers provider that has snagged exclusive deals with Facebook over the years, raised more than $40 million from Visa, Greylock Partners and other investors. The company notably picked up a strategic investor in Visa along with another traditional late-stage participants like T. Rowe Price.

TrialPay was one of the early offers providers on the Facebook platform that helped social gaming companies monetize the vast majority of users that were unlikely to pay for virtual goods. Instead of paying for virtual currency, players could get virtual currency for free by signing up for offers like Netflix subscriptions instead.

After an early ugly period on the platform that saw offers of questionable quality from several rivals, Trialpay emerged as a favored partner to Facebook. The company was initially offered a deal to be the exclusive offers provider for Facebook. Now the company says it reaches more than 70 million monthly active users worldwide and powers offer walls for top developers like Zynga and Playdom.

TrialPay partnered with Facebook in February 2011 to offer DealSpot — an in-game offers API that served daily deals to players, giving them virtual currency rewards if they mad a purchase. Before DealSpot, developers had to set up relationships with advertisers and video providers individually. This was difficult for companies without large sales teams.

In addition to Greylock, Visa and T. Rowe Price, the other investors include DAG Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s Growth Fund and QuestMark Partners. TrialPay announced it increased transaction volume by seven times and saw four times as much traffic to the platform in 2011. The company did not specify how it will use the funding beyond general growth and innovation.

It’s worth noting that Visa’s investment in Trialpay represents yet another step into virtual currency for the credit card company. Visa acquired Playspan, a company that supports dozens of payment options for casual game players, in Feburary of last year for $190 million in cash.

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Social/Mobile Game Developer Service Provider Nextive Acquired by Globant

Globant, a Buenos Aires-based software service provider, announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based social and mobile game developer service Nextive today for an undisclosed sum.

Nextive claims to have worked with the likes of Crowdstar, GSN and Zynga, providing services that range from basic quality assurance testing to full game design and engineering. As part of Globant, Nextive will head up the company’s mobile studio and increase its reach in North America. In a statement sent out via press release, Nextive CEO Andrew Burgert says he looks forward to working with Globant’s existing clients, which include EA, Disney, Sony, Linkedin and Google.

Globant recently made headlines by landing $15 million in financing from Riverwood Capital and FTV Capital. The company provides clients with software products designed in a mix of open source and proprietary software. With the Nextive acquisition, the company broadens its portfolio to include mobile and social game development.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Nextive’s 130 employees will join Globant staff in San Francisco, Buenos Aires and Cordoba.

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Facebook Page Managment Giant Buddy Media Acquires Social Ecommerce and Analytics Provider Spinback

Buddy Media, the largest Facebook Page management company, has acquired Spinback, a provider of social ecommerce and analytics solutions for Facebook Twitter, email, and blogs. Spinback’s technology will allow Buddy Media to allow its clients to better track how social sharing of links to products and services drive sales.

This acquisition of both the team and technology follows our predictions that expensive Facebook Page management services are becoming commodified by companies offering free products, so the Page management industry needs to explore new revenue streams by expanding into ad buying or ecommerce through partnerships and acquisitions.

Buddy Media got an early start in the industry, helping brands market themselves on Facebook since the Platform opened in late 2007. At time, there were few powerful Page management tools, let alone free ones, and brands didn’t have any experience and therefore needed helped. Since then, Buddy Media has signed some of the world’s most prominent brands, grown to over 170 employees, and raised $38.3 million, including a massive $23 million Series C round in October 2010.

Now, though, solid free tools and Page tab app suites are proliferating and brands are gaining the experience necessary to require less hand-holding with day-to-day Facebook Page operation. More brands are still shifting marketing focus towards Facebook, but commodification means the Page management industry’s largest companies will eventually need to seek additional revenue streams if they want to keep growing, or even avoid shrinking.

The most obvious expansion area is facilitating Facebook ad purchases by their clients — a lucrative business where they can license tools or charge a percent of the growing Facebook ad spend of big brands. The other is ecommerce, where they can also license Facebook ecommerce storefront and analytics solutions.This appears to be just what Buddy Media plans to do with Spinback, its first full-fledged acquisition.

Spinback’s two main offerings are EasyShare, a product and purchase social sharing widget, and EasyTrack, which provides analytics on this sharing and the sales it generates. These technologies will allow Buddy Media to inform clients about what social channels are driving sales, what products are being shared most frequently and creating the most revenue, and who are the most active and influential customers and customer segments.

Spinback has signed over 20 retailers as clients since it launched in October 2011, with clients seeing an average increase in incremental revenue of $2.10 per Facebook wall post, and  a conversion rate of 10.9% for Facebook shares leading to purchases. The five-person company’s founding CTO, Paul Boutin, was formerly the founder and CTO of Payvment, the most popular Facebook ecommerce storefront application.

The acquisition will allow Buddy Media to attract more retail and ecommerce clients, and offer a wider range of services to Spinback’s and its existing clients. It will also protect it from commodification as brands mature from establishing a Facebook presence to attaining a healthy return on investment in social.

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Zynga Hires Team From Poker Industry Service Provider MarketZero

Zynga is announcing today that it has “acquired the team” from MarketZero, a long-time poker services provider. The Austin, Texas company, which is apparently not being acquired itself, runs a web site for online card players called PokerTableRatings. Self-described as a “collection of useful tools designed to help poker players maximize their online profits,” the site includes a variety of community and reporting tools so players can find friends, research the history of opponents, and more.

Our understand is that the MarketZero team is going to work on improving Zynga’s oldest top title, Texas HoldEm Poker. Like other online poker games, Texas HoldEm Poker sees a high volume of transactions and is vulnerable to fraud, hacking and real money trading scams. Just last month, a British man convicted of stealing 400 billion chips from the game, some of which he sold on eBay, was sentenced to two years in prison. MarketZero’s expertise could help Zynga cut down on similar fraud risks and improve user experience. We understand that Zynga is not interested in entering the real money online poker market.

Launched in the early days of the platform, Texas HoldEm found a ready player base among online card players, and quickly grew to become one of the company’s most valuable properties. Zynga used the experience building the title — and the revenue generated from it — to power into role-playing games and eventually simulations. Today, all these years alter, it still has 6.95 million daily active users and 36.9 million monthly active users according to our app tracking service, AppData. That’s substantially more than any other card game. Maybe the hires will be tasked with beefing up the title’s offerings for its large and die-hard user base?

Yet, this so-called acquisition could just be a pure talent grab. The team also provides custom software development and consulting services to other companies, and perhaps Zynga will distribute the new hires — founders Gustavo Abdala, Amir Elaguizy, Nir Leibovich, Timothy Sullivan and Jason Wang — to other parts of the company.

Zynga also highlights that this is its eleventh acquisition of late. The previous ten:

XPD in BeijingChallenge Games in AustinUnoh Games in TokyoConduit Labs in BostonDextrose AG in FrankfurtBonfire Studios in DallasNewtoy Inc. in McKinney, TexasFlock teamArea/Code, New YorkFloodgate Entertainment

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Facebook Ecommerce Storefront Provider 8thBridge Takes $10 Million in Funding

Social commerce platform 8thBridge has taken $10 million in a second round of funding led by Trident Capital. The money will go towards developing an interest-based product recommendation engine and a brand evangelist rewards program within its StoreCast Facebook ecommerce app.

8thBridge, formerly Alvenda, was an early entrant into the Facebook ecommerce space, creating stores for 1-800-Flowers.com and Delta Air Lines. Other clients now include Hallmark, Land’s End, mark by Avon, and Brooks Brothers. The company previously received $5 million in a first round of funding in January 2010 from Split Rock Partners, a firm that also joined in the latest round.

The company currently offer storefronts which can be embedded in tabs on Facebook Pages and within news feed stories. This in-stream shopping has great potential because a single brand evangelist can enable all their friends to make purchases.

Along with recommendations and rewards programs, 8thBridge will use the funding to work on a social promotions system that might allow users to gain discounts if they can get their friends to purchase as well. Currently some of 8thBridge’s storefronts load as canvas apps, opposed to offering a shopping experience directly from a Page tab, which it may seek to change to reduce friction.

The funding continues the trend of companies aggressively pursuing the Facebook ecommerce solutions market. Storefront services, rewards program, and Facebook Connect-powered shopping sites are all rapidly proliferating. Storefronts including 8thBridge looking to succeed will need to offer simple onboarding and product catalog importing, intuitive checkout flows, deep social sharing options, and innovative promotions. Trident Capital and Split Rock’s investment should help 8thBridge concentrate enough resources on these problems.

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