INVESTMENT: The latest news

Cool Iris get 15 million ( I recently wrote about how I love the app and I see great things happening for them)

Social Cast $1 million, could turn out to be a dead donkey....but we shall see

E-toro Series b $6.3 million, its a game, a fun easy to use currency trading game, however you can do it for real and you can make money doing it.

This shows how excited the world is about MMO's and Virtual currency, this probably has a lot to do with the fact that the Asian market is worth billions.

Today Chinese online gaming company Changyou opened trading on the NASDAQ market after a successful $16 million public offering of 7.5 million shares priced at $16 each. Share price rose 40% to $22 in initial trading, with 3 million Changyou shares traded in the first ten minutes of the day. Changyou operates two MMORPGs in mainland China that monetize through virtual goods sales, netting a $201.8 million revenue and $108 million net profit for 2008. Changyou is the first new company to be listed on the NASDAQ since last November and the first Chinese company added renewable energy firm GT Solar International in August 2008.

INVESTMENT: Google Starts a VC fund

Google reviews has announced Google Ventures, a venture capital fund that “seeks to discover and grow great companies” in a “broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care.”

The fund has two managing partners: Bill Maris, perhaps best known in tech circles for founding Web hosting company Burlee.com, and Rich Miner, co-founder of mobile platform Android

As far as the size of the fund goes, actual amounts aren’t disclosed; however, the official site claims that the fund is “able to invest amounts ranging from seed funding to tens of millions of dollars.” In other words, anything goes, and Google probably won’t be cheap if they see a good opportunity. On the other hand, Google has always been somewhat careful, acquisition-wise, so don’t expect Google Ventures to be burning money; as they say, their goal is to “build great companies” but also to generate “long term financial return.”"

Start you business plans now.....

FUNDING: IGA consideres buyout

In-game advertising firm IGA Worldwide may seek a buyout if it can't successfully close a new round of funding. Chairman Justin Townsend is believed to favor the new funding deal, but won't rule out a sale of the company, according to VC-related news site VentureBeat. According to the site, any interested buyers must register their bids by March 27th. IGA has high-profile deals with publishers such as Sony, EA and Activision, and announced its 30 millionth unique user in October of last year. However, the general downturn in advertising budgets forced IGA to lay off 25 percent of its staff in November, and they needed to create a new business model.

Worried about the economy, STAY POSITIVE

I have been talking about this with various people saying that many of us seem to forget what has happened to us humans in the PAST and we always come out stronger, better, faster. See what Warren Buffet had to say.

(Remember he's lost countless billions in this recession...)

CNBC: “We’ve been getting thousands and thousands of emails from our viewers. Warren, we’d like to start with one that echoes a theme we heard again and again. This one comes from Terry in San Antonio, Texas, who asks, ‘Will everything be all right?’”

BUFFETT: “Everything will be all right. We do have the greatest economic machine that man has ever created. We started with 4 million people back in 1790 and look where we’ve come. And it wasn’t because we were smarter than other people. It wasn’t because our land was more fertile or we had more minerals or our climate was more favorable. We had a system that worked. It unleashed the human potential. It didn’t work every year. We had 6 ‘panics’ in the 19th century. In the 20th century we had the Great Depression, World Wars, all kinds of things. But we have a system – largely free market, rule of law, equality of opportunity – all of those things that cause the potential of humans to get unleashed. And we’re far from done. Your kids will live better than mine. Your grandchildren will live better than your kids. There’s no question about that. But the machine gets gummed up from time to time. If you take the bulk of those centuries, probably 15 years were bad years. But we go forward.”

INVESTMENT: Iminlikewithyou gets 5 million

One of my fav portals has just got 5 Million investment, and they have changed there name to OMGPOP.com very cool name.

Having recently invited Charles to an Event to be a speaker which he had to decline as he was pre rev and was watching the pennies......its really great to see all the hard work has paid off.

The 5 Million has been raised on the strength of its plans to begin monetizing the site through offers of premium service subscriptions, virtual goods, and virtual currency. The round was lead by Bessemer Venture Partners with past investors Spark Capital and and Baseline contributing, as reported by Venture Beat.

Just shows you do something well and the money is out there.

BUSINESS: Stardoll & Pizco Merge

Key Points

Deal includes cash and stock
Pizco CEO leaves and Pizco to be mainly run by Stardoll
The Aim is to create a larger network with multiple brands and try to follow the strategy of Viacom
New brand Paperdoll Heaven will be launched
They claim they will now reach over 20 million unique per month
U.S. Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners get exit from the deal They invested 11 million into PIZCO

It looks a bit more like a take over, and Stardoll will be taking advantage of the technology PIZCO have built, but reports have noted that PIZCO's numbers have been falling away in the UK and Stardolls number have fell away in the U.S so there is going to be a need for change and The Buzz around the deal may create new interest, also why not keep your existing Stardoll customers if they want to be part of another social network it will be easier for them to join and share especially if they allow one password similar to Yahoo or Google ID.

Read more here (media post)

AND more here (Guardian)

INVESTMENT : money in the bag

Mind Candy Acquires TUTPup

Tutpup allows youngster across the globe to compete in multiplayer maths and spelling challenges, and currently boasts 350,000 active players worldwide. Tutpup was developed by Cominded, a London-based firm owned by Bebo co-founder Paul Birch.

Seems like a good move however based on research I'm not sure that there are 350K active players on this site it seems that 10k would be a more realistic figure, and I would imagine that the acquisition is low value.

Disney Acquires Kerpoof For Kid-Generated Content

Kerpoof, is a Web-based suite of tools that lets kids create scenes, art, avatars and more.

UGC is becoming more and more popular and Disney are certainly doing all they can to position themselves in the top spot for online media. May be we will see this tech find its way to Club Penguin.

OfferPal gets $15 million series B

Today Offerpal Media announced that it had closed a $15 million round of Series B venture capital financing. The new round is lead by D.E. Shaw Ventures, with existing Offerpal investors InterWest Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners also participating. Offerpal states the money will be used primarily to improve the infrastructure of the platform and help it expand into new mobile and international markets.

A lot of people are unsure how to monetize Social Networks and dubious of what is possible....but let me be clear there are some experts like SR and OfferPal who know exactly how and some apps are making above 1 mio per month in rev. This investment does not surprise me, furthermore I would not be surprised to see a similar investment in Super Rewards.


Virtual Fairground Announces $4M Funding

Virtual Fairground announced today that it had raised $4 million in funding from one undisclosed angel investor. The announcement came alongside the news that Virtual Fairground had licensed the Alphanim cartoon Galactik Football to create a Flash-based virtual world. The funding is actually older: Co-Founder Maarten Brands had previously told WIM that the company had raised its round in Summer 2008, but wanted to remain under the radar until recently.

Wamba Aquired for 4 million Euros

Wamba is a Spanish social network with a focus on Latin American users. The company plans to launch an IPTV called Wamba.TV and a radio music service called Wamba.FM.

VIRTUAL WORLDS : Funding News

mEgo has raised $2.5 million in a second round of angel funding. mEgo lets users create widgets with avatars that serve as a central point for all their social media information.

IMVU closed a $10 million Series D round of investment led by Best Buy Capital with participation from existing investors Menlo Ventures, Allegis Capital and Bridgescale Partners. IMVU says it will use the money to invest in continued development of its community, which has grown to more than 30 million registered users. The company monetizes off of a virtual goods catalog, which boasts over 2 million user-created items and is proving especially attractive to investors as the advertising market shrinks. IMVU says it currently generates over $1 million a month in revenue, 90% of which comes from the sale of credits for purchasing and selling virtual goods.

Moggle Raising $10M for Development Platform

It announced yesterday that it had signed two deals to help it raise several rounds of financing this year. RCF SA, a Swiss banking firm, will work with Moggle on a variety of investment and banking issues, including raising equity outside of the U.S. Alexander David Securities Limited, a London-based securities firm, will serve as lead corporate financial advisor and broker for Moggle in the United Kingdom, help the company enter the London Stock Exchange's, AIM market and raise private equity capital outside of the U.S.

Moggle, which is working on a platform to develop at the convergence of MMOGs, virtual worlds, and social networks, says it is raising $10 million in two equal rounds this year. The first is set to close next month.

MINI NEWS: No nonsense headlines

Wireless Mics come to Singstar 2009, cool!

Pop Cap release Peggle nights level pack

Hasbro drops lawsuit against scrabulous

50 MB broadband arrives in the UK with Virgin (more on this soon)

Aeria gifts virtual currency to community

92% of VC's predict investment slowdown (more on this soon)

Neo Pets gained 8.6 million users in 2008

Warner buys another 10 million Eidos shares

Funding: Playspan nets another $16.8 million

Great news for the industry as investors continue to see the potential in virtual goods, this will help Playspan expand to Europe and Aisa

PlaySpan provides publishers and developers with a platform for managing secure micro-transactions, virtual goods sales, global alternative payments, and peer-to-peer trading. Its platform is currently live in games such as K2's Global Mu Online and Gala-Net's Upshift Strike Racer.

Playspan has a subsidiary PayByCash, which offers over 70 payment solutions in more than 180 countries currently supporting over 200 games from publishers such as Gala-Net, Ntreev, Outspark, and CCP.

PlaySpan's total funding now now around $24 million. This round was led by Easton Capital Group, Menlo Ventures, Novel TMT Ventures, STIC, and other undisclosed investors.

Q3 see $148.m invested in virual worlds in Q3

$148.5m invested in virtual worlds in Q3 // News: "$148.5m invested in virtual worlds in Q3

Virtual Worlds Management has revealed that venture capital and media firms have invested more than USD 148.5 million dollars in 12 virtual worlds companies during the third quarter of 2008.

The study shows that the total investment in the virtual worlds space this year is over USD 493 million, with all but USD 22.4 million going towards the entertainment sector to build youth-orientated MMOs.

'Many smaller investments were made across a spectrum of youth-oriented virtual worlds,' explained Joey Seiler, editor of VirtualWorldsNews.com. 'USD 35.64 million was invested in seven virtual worlds aimed at kids through teens. That's up significantly from Q1's USD 16.03 million in eight youth virtual worlds and Q2, which saw no investment targeted at youth worlds.'"

Koch in $3m casual marketing bonanza | Casual games | News by Casualgaming.biz

"A while ago I asked the question about casual games and marketing and since then I am seeing more emphasis going into marketing. Clearly this does not mean good marketing but at least there is more focus. The fact the Koch are willing to spend so much on advertising is great providing that they deliver a good campaign".

Koch in $3m casual marketing bonanza

Koch Media is to back its new range of casual Wii and DS titles with a whopping £1.5m ($3m) marketing spend in the UK.

The company’s Cherry Tree Lane range will feature its line of ‘Let’s Play’ titles, due for release in November, as well as titles based on the popular Groovy Chick franchise.

Other titles in the range include Ellen Whitaker’s Horse Life and Baby Life.

The range will enjoy national print magazine promotion in youngsters’ publications such as C-beebies, Animals and Go Girl Kids, as well as parent-focused titles including TV Times and Take A Break. Games magazines carrying ads for the titles will include Official Nintendo and GamesMaster.

On TV, ITV, ITV 2, Nickelodeon, Dave and More 4 will all carry Cherry Tree ads, as will UK Living.

Ads will appear online on The sun’s official site, as well as Yahoo and Closer – as well as games and kids’ sites.

So let watch the space and see if they get a return on there investment?