Tag: Social networking

  • Peak Games raises $5M for social gaming

    Peak Games raises $5M for social gaming

    May 25, 2011 | Dean Takahashi

    Turkish game publisher Peak Games has raised $5 million to make social games for emerging markets.

    The deal shows that investors are looking beyond established markets to emerging countries where social games are still catching on. Peak Games, which has more than 10 million monthly active users on Facebook, is targeting its games at Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.

    PEAK infographic 400

    The investment comes from Earlybird Venture Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Munich, Germany.

    Sidar Sahin, chief executive of the game company in Istanbul, said in an interview that it hopes to expand its roster of social games into markets such as Brazil and the broader Middle East region.

    “We believe the next big Facebook games will come from an emerging market,” Sahin said.

    While other companies try a one-size-fits-all approach for international markets, Peak Games focuses on making local versions of games that are culturally relevant to the people in the region. That’s key to getting a higher monetization than normal for an emerging market, said Rina Onur, co-founder and chief strategy officer.

    Michael Pachter, analyst for Wedbush Morgan, said Peak Games shows that the social gaming market is a global one and that it may already own a leadership position in markets such as Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.

    Sahin founded the company in October, 2010, and it already has 50 employees and 10 games. The company has 10 million monthly active users playing traditional Turkish and Arabic card and board games on Facebook.

    Onur said the company’s method is to understand its audience and make games directly for them. She noted that Turkey is the fourth-largest market for Facebook, with more than 28 million users. The number of Facebook users in the broader region grew 78 percent from a year ago.The company says it can reach as many as 56 million Facebook users now and expects that to grow to 250 million by 2015.

    Previously, Peak Games raised $2.5 million from Hummingbird Ventures and serial business angels Evren Ucok and Demet Mutlu, bringing its total fundraising to date to $7.5 million in six months.

    On a daily basis, 2 million people play the company’s games across five time zones, four continents, and five languages. The titles include Okey, Okey Plus, Poker Star, Komşu Şehir, Komşu Kabile, İkon Kız (FabGirl), Bizim Dünya, Komşu Çiftlik and Petiler. Okey, a card-based game, has more than 4.5 million monthly active users.

    The company develops its own games and has also partnered with several leading social game developers in the West, including The Broth and MagnetJoy.

    Rivals include Zynga, Disney-Playdom and EA-Playfish, as well regional players such as Brazil-focused firms Mentez and Vostu

    via Peak Games raises $5M for social gaming | VentureBeat.

  • Civil liberties villain of the week: Facebook

    Civil liberties villain of the week: Facebook

    The social networking site’s attempt to take advantage of its users’ content highlights the danger of granting a commercial entity access to your private life

    guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 February 2009 11.47 GMT

    Drumroll, please: the first liberty central award for corporate privacy abuse goes to … Facebook, in recognition of its attempt to lay “an irrevocable, perpetual” claim to users’ original content.

    Under Facebook’s previous terms of service, the company’s right to your original content expired if you deleted your account. On February 4, it announced it had updated the terms of service. Sharp-eyed users quickly realised the new conditions retrospectivly granted the company the right to retain their old content – even if they closed their account, Facebook retained the right to market and licence their pictures and blogposts in perpetuity.

    Facebook defended the new terms, with its founder Mark Zuckerberg posting a blog titled On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information, which could be crudely summarised as “trust us”. But yesterday, the company was forced to perform a U-turn, ditching the new stipulations in the face of heavy criticism from privacy campaigners, the threat of legal action and revolt by users. One Facebook group, People Against the New Terms of Service, grew to a membership of more than 109,000 in a matter of days. The company has now reinstated the old terms of service and has promised users more imput via a new Facebook group called the Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

    Perhaps the real problem with Facebook is that it creates an illusion of privacy, while in reality your private thoughts will eternally reside in cyberspace. With a new study suggesting social networking sites can damage our health by reducing the time we spend building relationships face-to-face, perhaps its time we all log off and get a life?

    Nominate your civil liberties villain of the week in the comments below.

    Source:  www.guardian.co.uk, 19 February 2009