TechCrunch

Google Quietly Invests Over $100 Million in Zynga, Readying Google Games

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5584118/google-quietly-invests-over-100-million-in-zynga-readying-google-games

Whoa. TechCrunch reports that Google has invested between $100 and $200 million in Zynga, the social gaming behemoth behind Farmville, Mafia Wars, and others, in preparation for the launch of Google Games later this year.

TechCrunch’s “multiple sources” say that Google itself, not its venture capital division Google Ventures, has invested between $100 and $200 million in Zynga, a huge power play presumably with the aim of eroding Facebook’s social media dominance.

It seems that Google sees Zynga as the best way to hit the ground running with Google Games, a social gaming service from the search company that’s set to launch later this year. TechCrunch points to this job opening for “Product Management Leader, Games” at their Mountain View campus as proof that we’ll be seeing a lot more about Google’s move into gaming in the near future.

With Google Me, the company’s purported Facebook killer, continuing to take shape, this major investment in Zynga is just further proof that Google is making a very serious effort to hit Facebook where it hurt, namely, the farms. [TechCrunch]

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Monday, July 12th, 2010 news No Comments

Offermatic Gives You Sizeable Discounts Based on Your Spending Habits

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5532835/offermatic-gives-you-sizeable-discounts-based-on-your-spending-habits

Offermatic Gives You Sizeable Discounts Based on Your Spending Habits The best discounts are for things you actually buy. Free web service Offermatic uses your credit card, through the same back-end as Mint.com, to offer 40-90 percent discounts on products similar to what you’ve already purchased.

If you’re not squeamish about providing financial information to financial scanning sites like Mint.com, Offermatic is a pretty sweet deal. You register your credit cards with Offermatic through their secure system, which then scans your purchases and spits back out high-discount offers from their advertisers, made to match your interests. You won’t necessarily get coupons for the exact stores you shop at, but the examples seem to be highly related.

Depending on how much you spend, you can also make up to $15 a year back per card (though, to be honest, we’re not about to spend $1,000 a month just to get $15 back at the end of the year, and we wouldn’t recommend you do either). But getting 40-90 percent off some pretty popular stores isn’t bad for a free service. For the folks on the fence about how Offermatic makes their cut, here’s what their FAQ has to say:

If your service is free, how do you make money?
We make money by saving you money. We get a commission from the advertiser when our users purchase their offer through us.

Do you sell my personal or individual data?
Never. When we send you an offer from one of our advertisers, it’s based on your anonymous purchase history. Advertisers do not know your name, email address, or location. Only if you choose to purchase an offer will that information be provided to the offer merchant so you can redeem the offer with them. We do not – and will not – provide or sell any personally identifiable information in order to present you an offer.

So, if you’re less than frightened about card-watching sites like Mint or Blippy, Offermatic is a deal you’ll want to take a closer look at.

Offermatic [via TechCrunch]

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Friday, May 7th, 2010 news No Comments

Android Phones Surpass iPhone in Web Traffic

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5525578/android-phones-surpass-iphone-in-web-traffic

According to data collected by mobile advertising network AdMob, Android phones have surpassed the iPhone in mobile traffic—at least in terms of ads served to the devices, which is a pretty good measure for overall traffic. As mobile browsers account for more and more of our online time, it’ll be interesting to see how the OS distribution works out. [TechCrunch]

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Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 statistics No Comments

A Whole Lot of Games [Ipad]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5511650/ipad-apps-by-the-numbers-a-whole-lot-of-games

It’s still very, very early in the world of iPad-specific apps, with less than 2,500 of them in the store compared to 150,000+ iPhone apps. But so far? It’s totally dominated by games.

App store analysts Distimo did a rundown of what you’ll find in the iPad app store, and a full third of them are games. The next closest category is “entertainment,” which clocks in at 11%, followed by “education” at 8.6%.

That seems like a whole lot of game playing and being entertained, but that proportion is even more heavy for iPhone apps, where a full 70% of apps fall into those two categories.

But with devs just getting the actual hardware into their hands a few days ago, we’re clearly just seeing the very beginning of the iPad apps craze. And depending on how people decide the want to use this thing, we could see even more games pop up or we could see the store balanced out with more content-based or productivity apps. But really, the smart money is on games, games, games. [Distimo via TechCrunch]

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Thursday, April 8th, 2010 news No Comments

These Court Docs Show Only 90 Preorders (With 15 returned) [Tablets]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5505724/joojoo-tablet-these-court-docs-show-only-90-preorders-with-15-returned

These Paypal documents from the JooJoo/Techcrunch lawsuit show that only 90 preorders for the $500 device, roughly $44k worth, were made. This is what happens when you launch a tablet the same month as Apple, at the same price.

And 15 of those turned into cancellations (which were hard to do, we hear.) That doesn’t seem like it’s enough money to cover legal fees or kick production into high gear. I’m going to reiterate our stance: It seems like a great device, but you should wait for things to shake out before putting down more money. And remember, this costs as much as an iPad.

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Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 news No Comments

Ad-supported photo books

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/Xq6w7UEmbTg/hotprints-prints-free-ad+supported-photo-books

Need physical copies of some great shots, but you’re a bit too lazy to order and pay for them? HotPrints mails you free 16-page photo books, with shots pulled from Facebook, if you don’t mind some non-intrusive paper ads.

In this case, non-intrusive means the advertisements aren’t watermarked or otherwise touching your actual photos. They’re inserted between the pages, and can be pulled out, kind of like magazine subscription cards. You’d also have to be comfortable with HotPrints using “contextual” data from Facebook to target some ads at you. That means the album style you choose, the content of your profile, and region information from your Facebook account are used to target the ads, but the company claims that no identifying information is given out to its sponsoring partners. You can read more about HotPrints’ do’s and don’ts at their privacy policy.

If you’re cool with that at the cost of free, even free shipping, HotPrints’ Facebook app makes it fairly easy to pull in tagged photos of yourself or any Facebook contacts for a quickie album, with a limit of one per month. It’s a free service, requires a Facebook account (and app authorization) to use.

HotPrints [via TechCrunch]

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