Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » SGN

MindJolt Acquires Social Gaming Network and Hallpass Media

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 06:25:03 +0000

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.

MindJolt appears to be in a better spot than MySpace right now. MySpace is continuing to lose money and MindJolt is profitable with $20 million in revenue. MindJolt has also recently acquired Social Gaming Network (SGN) and Hallpass Media. This acquisition doubles MindJolt’s staff to about 80 employees.

When MySpace’s revenue fell in 2009, DeWolfe who was CEO at the time was basically kicked out. Facebook started really dominating in 2009. Currently MySpace is being shopped around and it is rumored that buyers are not willing to spend higher than $100 million for it. DeWolfe is rumored to be involved as one of the buyers. This is a huge difference from the $856 million revenues that MySpace posted in 2008 and the $580 million price that News Corp. spent to buy the social network in 2005.

Hallpass Media is a gaming portal website that receives about four million monthly visitors. Hallpass Media also has 1,500 web based games that will be added to MindJolt’s portfolio. Social Gaming Network (SGN) creates iPhone and Android games that have a total of about 30 million downloads.

“Initially, a lot of energy was spent on games on the Web, through platforms like Facebook,” stated SGN founder and executive chairman Shervin Pishevar. “But over the past year, what we’ve seen is that a lot of that activity is going into mobile. We’ve reached a tipping point.”

SGN raised about $18 million in venture capital funding from Felicis Ventures, Greylock Partners, The Founders Fund, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures, and Lars Hinrichs.

[NYT]

SGN Raises Funding From Tomorrow Ventures

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:44:43 +0000

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]

ToyBots Launches Platform For Actual Toys To Interact Socially Online

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:09:56 +0000

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.

Jeff Bezos Invests In Social Gaming Network (SGN)

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:58:54 +0000

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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Social Gaming Network Raises $15 Million For Social Game Distribution

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:16:14 +0000

“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.Â The SGN Blog is located at: http://blog.socialgn.com/.Â For developers, SGN APIs are located at: http://developers.socialgn.com/.

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