Wooga Nets $24 Million Investment, Starts Hiring Spree

Growing social game developer wooga announced a $24 million series B round of funding today led by Highland Capital Partners. Founder and CEO Jens Begemann says the money will go toward hiring two new employees per week until the company reaches a total headcount of 150 staff members.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, wooga ranks third among top social game developers both by monthly active users at 29.8 million and daily active users at 4.7 million. Three of its games rank in our top 20 social games by MAU with Diamond Dash sitting at number 10 just behind CrowdStar’s It Girl.

The developer got off to a quick start on Facebook in July of 2009 with Brain Buddies. At the time, it decided not to pursue any kind of in-game monetization or ad support. A year later, wooga did introduce monetization after going all-in on Facebook Credits. At that time, Begemann told us that the decision was based on a long-term growth strategy similar to Facebook’s where wooga raised venture capital to invest in growth rather than relying on monetizing as quickly as possible. In a follow-up interview, he elaborated on growth strategies through cross-game promotion after Facebook limited the viral channels available to social games.

The strategy seems to have paid off if we study the growth of one its most recent hits, Diamond Dash, which has seen a rapid rise to the top over the course of eight weeks between March and May of 2011. Even now after adding monetization features post-launch, the game still regularly makes the top five in our weekly top 20 list of fastest-growing games.

This second round of funding from Highland Capital Partners also includes  participation from Tenaya Capital and existing investors existing investors Balderton Capital and HV Holtzbrinck Ventures. Highland’s General Partner Fergal Mullen joins wooga’s Board of Directors as part of the round. Wooga’s series A round of funding closed in November of 2009 at $7.5 million.

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CityVille Sneak Peek: Zynga teases Mall feature, time for a shopping spree

by Joe Osborne, Posted May 25th 2011 3:50PM

Jay and Silent Bob would be proud. Zynga has released the first promotional image of Malls, an upcoming feature in CityVille. There are little to no details on this new building, just a blurb from the developer that reads, "Malls are coming soon! Get ready for some great benefits and perks too! Stay tuned, you won't wanna miss out!" If you're asking for our educated guess (or wild speculations), we'd imagine that Malls will be another community building. However, we hope that they will come with those additional features Zynga has been teasing since the release of the Visitor's Center. Until these Malls are released, they'll have roller coasters and hover cars inside them ... at least in your dreams.

What do you think these Malls will amount to in CityVille? What function do you think is missing from CityVille buildings? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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Tags: cityville, cityville mall, cityville malls, cityville sneak peek, cityville unreleased, mall, mall+in+game+cityville, mallingamecityville, malls, malls+cityville, mallscityville, preview, sneak peek, unreleased, zynga

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Zynga vs. MindJolt: MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe has buyout spree

by Joe Osborne, Posted Apr 20th 2011 2:05PM

Wasting no time after MySpace's imminent failure, founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe has acquired two new social game development companies through MindJolt, his own social game platform. MindJolt gobbled up both SGN and Hallpass Media, a leading developer and publisher of social mobile games and a popular free online game network, respectively.

The terms or amounts spent on the buyouts are undisclosed, but DeWolfe said this in a statement: "The acquisition of SGN and Hallpass broadens our content offering and extends our reach," DeWolfe said. "Mindjolt becomes a cross-platform 'triple threat' with great games across mobile, social, and web platforms. This three-pillar approach enables MindJolt to deliver our games wherever people choose to play, and differentiates our service from others in this space."

As you can see from his previous endeavors, DeWolfe aims big--all the time. And the former MySpace chief appears to refuse defeat in this next venture, laying the framework for a social gaming company to compete with the bigwigs like Zynga and EA's Playfish studio. SGN, founded in 2008, has seen its mobile games like Mini Tycoon Casino, F.A.S.T., and Skies of Glory top the charts on the Apple App Store, and now brings those games to MindJolt. Not to mention its development talent.

Hallpass will help MindJolt expand its reach beyond Facebook with a network of over 4 million players and 1,500 new games. The company is already well-positioned to take the FarmVille creator head on in the Facebook arena as well with an app that enjoys 6.8 million monthly players and over 1.2 million daily fans.

With these two acquisitions, it appears that MindJolt is working to expand where Zynga has just begun to venture into: mobile and the rest of the Internet. However, Zynga already has two of the top mobile developers, Newtoy, and Area/Code. Will MindJolt be able to stake its claim on mobile before Zynga has a chance to capitalize on its own recent buyouts?

That's not even the end of it. According to AdWeek, DeWolfe (pictured right) plans to follow Zynga's lead in other areas as well like advertising. Zynga has already been wildly successful with brand integration in its games--though perhaps not for gameplay's sake--and MindJolt aims for the same results. "With 25 to 30 million unique users, there's a critical mass of users there," DeWolfe said to AdWeek. "We can go to ad agencies and to top media buyers and integrate their brands into our games."

And with DeWolfe looking to sell more virtual goods too, Zynga is looking at an assault from all angles. The only problem is that CEO Mark Pincus and his crew have already been at this game for a year. DeWolfe and MindJolt are already at a disadvantage. Though, DeWolfe has plenty experience in this department, creating MySpace and bringing social networking into the mainstream. MindJolt just might have a better shot at toppling Zynga than most companies that rise to the challenge, but we won't see the dust settle on this battle for some time.

[Image Credits: MindJolt and Mark Robert Halper]

How well against Zynga do you MindJolt will do given these acquisitions? Should Zynga be wary of MindJolt, or is this just another company looking for a sliver of the social gaming pie? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.
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Tags: acquisition, adweek, areacode, buyout, Chris DeWolfe, ea, farmville, hallpass, Mindjolt, mindjolt games, mobile games, mobile gaming, mobile social games, myspace, newtoy, playfish, sgn, social games, zynga

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