Network

This week’s headlines from across Inside Network

by M. Dorn on July 23, 2012 · 0 comments

A roundup of all the news Inside Network brought you between July 16 and 21.

Inside Mobile Apps

Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms and virtual goods.

Monday, July 16

  • Fish Tales evolves into Fantastic Fishies
  • Zynga’s David Ko opens up about Zynga’s mobile publishing plans

Tuesday, July 17

  • Crickler provides a new take on crosswords
  • Autodesk acquires Socialcam for $ 60M
  • Kiip raises $ 11 Million in Series B round of funding lead by Relay Ventures
  • Appcelerator introduces private cloud services to court bigger developers, enterprise clients
  • Diptic, Pyramid Run, Guess the Character! and more on this week’s top free iOS Apps

Wednesday, July 18

  • Analytics company Apsalar moves into advertising with ApEngage, now reaches 225 million users
  • InMobi confirms MMTG Labs acquisition
  • Inside Network Job Board: nWay, 12 Gigs, GREE and more
  • StartApp passes 150M downloads of its Android-only, bundled search software
  • How Miniclip went from web portal to 100M mobile downloads
  • Richard Garriott’s Ultimate RPG is spiritual successor to Ultima on mobile and social platforms
  • Tiny Wings returns with new 2.0 update

Thursday, July 19

  • Pocket raises $ 5M Series B to expand its ‘save for later’ services
  • Germany’s Bigpoint closes mobile division, lays off 29
  • New hires in mobile: Square, Gameloft and EA PopCap
  • Armor Games’ latest challenges players to Follow the Rabbit
  • Adfonic: Android overtakes iOS to become most popular platform for mobile advertisers
  • Amazing Alex, Tiny Wings, Minecraft and more on this week’s top paid iOS apps

Friday, July 20

  • CSR Racing, The Tribez, Fieldrunners 2 and more on this week’s top grossing iOS apps
  • Google acquires popular third-party email client Sparrow
  • GREE to open Vancouver studio, will focus on innovation, new concepts
  • Facebook adds iOS and Mac development studio Acrylic to design team
  • Deity Wars enters the card-battling fray
  • Amazing Alex, Shadowgun and more on this week’s Android app charts
  • Mobile app news roundup: mobile Mozilla, Apple fixes and Transformers heads to Mobage

Saturday, July 21

  • Inside Network Job Board: nWay, 12 Gigs, Playsino and more

Inside Social Games

Covering all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, July 16

  • SimCity Social tops this week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook games by MAU
  • Hotel Casino review
  • Zynga’s David Ko opens up about Zynga’s mobile publishing plans

Tuesday, July 17

  • Grace Brown review

Wednesday, July 18

  • Applifier debuts Facebook-only video ad network for game trailers
  • SongPop barely outpaces SimCity Social as this week’s fastest-growing Facebook game by DAU
  • Inside Network Job Board: nWay, 12 Gigs, Playsino and more
  • Crazy Penguin Wars review
  • Richard Garriott: Mobile and social platforms represent “third grand era of computer games”

Thursday, July 19

  • The Sims Social and Zynga Slingo are this week’s gainer and loser among July’s Top 25 Facebook games
  • CastleVille lead designer founds new mobile studio, BonusXP
  • Birdopolis review
  • New hires in social games: Social Point, PlaySpace and Zynga

Friday, July 20

  • GameDuell: Cross-platform players monetize 25% more than those on a single platform
  • King’s Bounty lords over this week’s emerging Facebook games
  • Hollywood Slots review
  • Outernauts is now live on Facebook
  • Social games news roundup: Zynga, Zynga and more Zynga

Saturday, July 21

  • Inside Network Job Board: nWay, 12 Gigs, Big Viking Games and more

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

  • Monday, July 16
  • Less than 10 percent of traffic to Facebook pages comes from outside Facebook.com
  • Facebook hires team behind mobile bookmarking service Spool
  • New mobile ‘action links’ allow users to take specific actions in other apps without leaving Facebook
  • Facebook creates duplicate page finder tool for admins to report unofficial pages

Tuesday, July 17

  • Autodesk acquires No. 1 Facebook app Socialcam for $ 60M
  • Extole creates new marketing apps that promote word of mouth using Open Graph
  • Facebook brings activity log to mobile devices so users can delete stories and check privacy settings
  • Viralheat launches free conversation management and publishing tool to serve small businesses and agencies
  • Facebook platform industry hires: Conversocial, FreshBuzz, Nanigans, Shoutlet, TBG Digital and Wildfire

Wednesday, July 18

  • Facebook ads in desktop and mobile News Feed outperform Twitter promoted accounts

Thursday, July 19

  • Facebook bug leads Lululemon and more pages to post fake offers; other pages can’t create offers at all
  • Facebook testing new Pinterest-inspired design for app stories in News Feed
  • ShareThis brings social reader functionality to new sharing widget for publishers
  • Xbox, EA Sports, Gamestop, and Lego among others in this week’s most talked about pages in games and toys
  • SimCity Social, Spotify, SongPop, TripAdvisor, Instagram and more on this week’s top growing apps by DAU
  • Facebook to introduce sponsored results in search typeahead

Friday, July 20

  • Facebook adds iOS and Mac development studio Acrylic to design team
  • Facebook hires: technology partners, analysts, platform operations, growth, more
  • Facebook careers: natural language processing, privacy, media solutions, more
  • Custom tabs, Ghosts of Mistwood, Jewel Kingdom, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU
  • Facebook roundup: stock price and customer satisfaction down, Washington to offer voter registration app, Zuckerberg visits Walmart HQ and more

 


Source: Inside Social Games

Inside Network Job Board: nWay, 12 Gigs, Big Viking Games and more

by M. Dorn on July 21, 2012 · 0 comments

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best social media job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: nWay, 12 Gigs, GREE and more.

Big Viking Games

  • Game Designer

FunSockets

  • Senior Director of User Acquisition

 Karma

  • Game Programmer

King.com

  • Community Manager/CRM Assistant

Nectar Communications

  • PR Account Supervisor/Director 

nWay, Inc

  • Back-end Engineer

Playsino

  • Associate Producer Mobile/ Social Games
  • Lead iOS Developer Mobile/ Social Games

PT Gaming

  • Job Fair – San Bruno Customer Service Provider

TellApart

  • Sales Executive

Ubisoft

  • Games Metrics Analyst


Source: Inside Social Games

10 Steps to Creating a Network of Guest Bloggers

by M. Dorn on July 21, 2012 · 0 comments

Anyone running a B2B blog is always on the lookout for guest bloggers from outside their own organization. They provide much-needed interesting content, they offer support by sharing links with their networks and they widen the pool of expertise on offer to your readers. But how do you get those quality guest bloggers to contribute to your blog? Here are the ten steps to building a network of guest bloggers that I have followed for the B2B PR Blog and the B2B Social Media Guide.

1. Create a quality blog

Seems a bit obvious but, judging by the number of people who have invited me to guest post on their poorly managed blogs, it needs to be said. Ask any blogger – they will be more inclined to write for you if they feel it is worth their while – that means they need to feel they are contributing to something that, at a minimum, reflects the professional standards they adhere (or aspire) to. That means
great content and appealing design.

2. Optimize your blog for search engines

No matter how great your content or how beautiful your design, if Google (and other search engines) can’t read it in their preferred language, then you’re not going to rise up the search rankings and attract organic search traffic. The number of people willing to contribute to your blog is directly related to the number of readers it has, so if you’re not attracting search traffic you’re not going to be attracting the guest bloggers.

3. Drive traffic to your blog

Do whatever it takes to get relevant people to read your blog. I’ve used social bookmarking, shared every post on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, guest blogged myself, and offered a weekly prize for the best comment to encourage engagement. The benefit for both my blogs has been a steadily rising readership.

4. Have a contributors page

Any would-be guest blogger should be able to easily establish whether you take contributed content, and if so, what kind of content you take and what form you want it in. Make this prominent so that there is never any confusion.

5. Follow other bloggers

Know a great blogger who you think would be a valuable addition to your network of contributors? Develop an understanding of who they are, their preferred subjects and the types of guest posts they offer by engaging with them on social networks. Armed with this information, you’ll be able to make a targeted pitch.

6. Give something back

Most guest bloggers are happy to be paid in backlinks (the currency of SEO), tweets, Facebook likes or comments. Whatever it is, make sure your offering to the blogosphere is appealing.

7. Find experts in your field

Approach experts or up and coming experts directly on LinkedIn. Look for people in positions of power or influence and invite them (use inmails) to share some of their knowledge with you. If they say no, then why not play the long game and go for their second in commands? They’ll ultimately probably be promoted into those positions of influence, and they might be more willing to share their stories on the way up.

8. Ask PR people

It’s their job to find good guest posting opportunities for their clients. The best way to get them? I send out enquiries asking for experts in certain fields on Gorkana and Response Source – it’s incredibly effective, but only if your blog meets certain minimum quality standards.

9. Ask for specific topics

When you make your approach, be specific – asking someone if they would be interested in contributing a guest blog on something to do with their industry is vague enough for them to say yes without actually having to commit. It also puts them in the difficult position of having to figure out what to write, which, for some people is more of a mission than writing the darn post. Asking them for their top ten tips on encouraging resellers to promote their product over a competitors’ (for example) and they will be less inclined to agree non-commitally, and more inclined to actually write it.

10. Join a blog network

There are a number of blogger networks out there that put guest bloggers in touch with blog editors. Take myblogguest.com for an example. You register your details, and outline the types of contribution you are after, and they come to you!

What are some steps you have tried to encourage guest bloggers to contribute?


Source: Social Media B2B

Applifier debuts Facebook-only video ad network for game trailers

by M. Dorn on July 18, 2012 · 0 comments

Cross-promotion pioneer Applifier is upgrading from display bars to a video ad network called Impact, debuting on Facebook this month with King.com, Gaia Online and Song Pop games.

Impact allows developers to display 30- to 60-second game trailers from within a Facebook game at key points of the user experience. The idea is that the videos increase monetization or acquisition, depending on how they are implemented. A user may be prompted to watch a video in exchange for a virtual good for that game after failing a level, for example; this would increase monetization as the user is more engaged (and therefore more likely to spend) and any advertising seen in the video will yield pay-per-view revenue for the developer. On the acquisition side, a user may see a persistent module in a game’s UI that shows a video trailer of a second game, which could drive cross-promotion.

Whatever method a developer chooses, Applifier’s policy mandates that Impact video ads are opt-in only — no forcing them on users unasked. The video ads can be targeted at either the most engaged users (the ones more likely to monetize), or at users who could be losing interest and are therefore in the mood to try a new game (more likely to become a new acquisition). The targeting is based on player behavior collected from over 250 million anonymous player profiles. Developers can choose to reinvest earnings from displaying the video ads to receive a 25 percent boost in user acquisition.

Impact might seem like a stretch for the noble-spirited cross-promotion network of 2010 that wanted to share traffic between small- and mid-sized developers. Applifier CEO Jussi Laakkonen explains, however, that game trailers are very much an extension of his company’s core values.

“We still believe in Facebook gaming,” he tells Inside Social Games. “It’s not exploding anymore, but there’s still business there. We believe Facebook games deserve more [recognition] for the quality. Trailers can provide that — banners are just not enough.”

Around this time last year, Applifier had just entered the mobile market with a game discovery and cross-promotion app similar to what it offered on Facebook. The company has been very quiet since then; Laakkonen says that we can expect to hear more about Applifier’s efforts in the coming months. Next up on the company’s to-do is a panel on user acquisition panels during the IDGA Summit at Casual Connect in Seattle next week.


Source: Inside Social Games

Inside Network Job Board: Ubisoft, FunSockets, King.com and more

by M. Dorn on July 14, 2012 · 0 comments

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best social media job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: Ubisoft, FunSockets, King.com and more.

  • Game Designer

  • Senior Director of User Acquisition
  • Product Manager for Mobile Games

International Development

  • Market Analyst

Karma Gaming

  • Game Programmer
  • Director of PR & Marketing
  • Community Manager/CRM Assistant

Nectar

  • PR Account Supervisor/ Director

Offerpop

  • Account Executive
  • Associate Producer Mobile / Social Games
  • Lead iOS Developer Mobile / Social Games

PT Gaming

  • Job Fair – San Bruno Customer Service Professionals

ReachLocal

  • Sales Executive
  • Sales Executive

Tone It Up

  • Social Media Director/Coordinator
  • Games Metrics Analyst
  • Sidekick to the CTO/Technical Consultant

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform, mobile and social gaming industry today.


Source: Inside Social Games

New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Big Viking Games, TellApart, Playsino and more

by M. Dorn on July 1, 2012 · 0 comments

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best social media job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: Big Viking Games, TellApart, Playsino and more.

  • Game Designer
  • Social Game Designer
  • Senior Programmer
  • Associate Producer/Producer
  • Senior Director of User Acquisition

  • Product Manager for Mobile Games

International Development Group (IDG)

  • Market Analyst

  • Director of PR & Marketing

  • IT Manager
  • Sales Director
  • HR Administrator
  • Community Manager/CRM Assistant

Mixr, Inc.

  • IOS App/Game Developer

  • Associate Producer  Mobile / Social Games
  • Lead iOS Developer  Mobile / Social Games

PT Gaming

  • Job Fair –  Customer Service/Retail Professionals

ReachLocal

  • Sales Executive
  • Sales Executive
  • Director, Performance Marketing
  • Sidekick to the CTO/Technical Consultant
  • Product Manager, Growth & Engagement
Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform, mobile and social gaming industry today.


Source: Inside Social Games

← Previous Entries

Page 1 of 601234...10...Last »