MindJolt is a gaming company that is run by MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe. DeWolfe left MySpace a few years after News Corporation acquired the social network company.

Social Gaming Network (SGN) has raised funding from Tomorrow Ventures, a VC company started by Google CEO Eric Schmidt.  SGN focuses on making games for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.   This was SGN’s second round of funding at $2 million.  SGN’s previous round of funding was $15 million. [TechCrunch]

Social Gaming Network (SGN), the online game development company behind F.A.S.T., iBowl, and Vampires vs. Werewolves has launched a platform thats a bit different from their normal state of business. SGN created a product for toys to read data from the Internet and communicate that information to kids through the audio source within the toy. The demo that ToyBots used at the TechCrunch50 conference was called Woozee.

Woozee had the ability to read stories to children at night from previous audio recordings made by a parent or guardian. This way if a parent or guardian wanted to read a story to their children at night, the toy would be able to do it while they were away on a business trip. Pretty creepy eh? This means that Tickle-Me-Elmo would be actually read Goodnight Moon to your kids for you. As if kids’ imaginations weren’t already wild enough.

Toys could also have a network of friends that connect with other toys. ToyBots already has a telecommunications deal in place that they will announce later on. Some of the potential revenue streams include royalties and licensing costs. ToyBots would even give developers an SDK to create applications for the toys. Shervin Pishevar is the founder and CEO of ToyBots.

A couple months ago, Social Gaming Network raised $15 million in Series A from investors such as Greylock, Columbia Capital, Founders Fund, and Novak Biddle Venture Partners.  Now the company has another solid investor backing them up, founder of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) Jeff Bezos.  Bezos invested through his firm, Bezos Expeditions.

“We are proud to be announcing the Bezos Expeditions investment,” stated Shervin Pishevar, the CEO of SGN. “Mr. Bezos’ knowledge and experience lends itself to the growth and expansion of the social gaming ecosystem. His participation in our funding will allow us to continue capturing new demographics in gaming by distributing the highest quality games available on the social web.”

Social Gaming Network specifically designs games and applications for mainstream social networks.  Some of the games that SGN has developed includes Warbook, Jetman, Street Race, Text Twirl, Free Gifts, FightClub, Nicknames, and Superlatives.

“SGN has the expertise to bring gaming into entirely new markets.” stated Steve Campbell, the CIO of Bezos Expeditions. “There’s an obvious benefit to gaining such deep traction in the social networking area.”

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“We could not be more pleased with the announcement we are making today. This funding is indicative of how SGN is poised to dramatically impact the future of gaming platforms on the social web, stated Shervin Pishevar, CEO of Social Gaming Network (SGN). Our focus and drive is to develop a dynamic and flourishing ecosystem for gaming on the web and continue to be the obvious choice for game developers who want to create social games that engage millions of users on the social networks and beyond.”

Many of today’s companies are finding ways to create games to keep users appealed whether its on their own websites or powered by applications within top social networks. As there has been a slowdown in the development of pointless applications on these social networks, many companies are finding that games are the way to go. This is further evidenced by the funding that Social Gaming Network received today.

Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, Columbia Capital, and Biddle Venture Partners have invested $15 million Series A into SGN. SGN is focusing on making it easy for developers to consolidate applications on top of gaming to create a way to interact with users and to monetize through the application’s popularity.

With this round of funding, SGN will add more features and functionalities to their current platform.

SGN’s claim to fame was the instant traction that was gained by Warbook, the company’s first Facebook game. Other popular applications that SGN has produced includes Jetman, Free Gifts, Fight Club, Superlatives, Nicknames, Street Race, and Text Twirl.

SGN’s userbase includes 1 million daily game players, 70 million virtual gifts sent, and 50 million application installations.

SGN is based in Palo Alto, Calif.  The SGN Blog is located at: http://blog.socialgn.com/.  For developers, SGN APIs are located at: http://developers.socialgn.com/.

Information Source:
[1] Press Release sent by theMIX Inc.