Writing checks casually for $100k, selling companies for hundreds of millions of dollars, and then throwing back drinks with semi-well known rappers (see videos below) … this is what Silicon Valley is made of. It’s also only two days of activity. The Valley is an environment where life-time successes are celebrated for half a minute before the next guy cashes a check bigger than yours. Dave McClure raised $30 million for an investment fund in under 6 months but is that really all it took? Definitely not. The founders of Playdom built and sold a gaming startup (now what most people would consider an empire) in a couple years. But is a couple years all it took? Hell no.
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This week in social games was an exciting one. EA selected Live Gamer to power microtransactions, we had a chance to interview Alex St. John of Hi5, Chief Revenue Officer of Offerpal and Robert Winkler of the MMO Dawn of the Dragons, a brain IQ game called InGenius saw tremendous growth, Disney acquired Playdom for over 700M, Habbo saw growth on Facebook, action-adventure MMO Warrior Epic expanded to South East Asia, Depict 1.6 was selected as an OpenFeint Gold game, Mazda launched DriverVille to promote its new Mazda2 in North America, Zynga confirmed its joint venture with Softbank as well as its $150M in funding, Playdom signed a 5 yr deal with Facebook.

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From the mind of Dave Jones – the creator of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto – comes a new social gaming experience for a new generation. Dubbed “the ‘Placebook’ for a next generation of social games”, Project: MyWorld combines social media, social games and virtual worlds in one of the most ambitious online gaming endeavors to date. Just unveiled earlier this week, Project: MyWorld could really shake things up in the gaming world when it goes live early next year. Read on for more about what Project: MyWorld promises, and whether or not it can deliver.
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Casual Connect is over, and it’s remarkable how close the group gets, even at 2,000 attendees, by the third day.  It’s almost impossible to walk the floor to see the final day sessions without running into someone who you genuinely want to connect with… casually.  Having said that, there were a few topics that kept coming up in my many conversations during the conference, during the after parties and with speakers after presentations.  I take a look at the 5 that seemed most popular after the jump.

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Exhibiting poise, insight and respect, Nigerian President Goodluck Johnson has risen to the top of the list of politicians using social media effectively. Johnson set up a Facebook account a little over a month ago and has posted at least once a day since. However, it is not simply the number of posts that makes his account one to watch for interested politicians and pundits, but rather the content therein – he discusses many dimensions of the government’s actions and policies, even reversing one of his decisions based on the comments that citizens left on his Facebook page. Read on for an in-depth look at what makes his use of social media such a success.
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CardStar is an interesting iPhone application that allows users to consolidate all their various reward cards, club cards and such into one application.  The premise is that you’d walk into a store, open up the CardStar application, and the clerk can literally scan your phone to find your rewards account.  Taking this to a new level, the latest release of CardStar now integrates with Foursquare, allowing users to check in while they use their loyalty card at a given store.  What CardStar doesn’t talk about, is how merchants can take advantage of their clients checking in at their store.  I examine the potential below.

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Failure is a state of mind, and in my mind, these are the nonperformances of the week.  Starting with a botched CISCO campaign to emulate Old Spice, I take a look at rappers, giant social networking corporations, Google and more to give you my social media FAILs of the week.

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We recently reported that US businesses ranks ninth — behind several countries with much smaller economies — in profiting from social media strategies. A new study reveals that — for the third year running — US businesses lag behind academia and large charities in social media adaptation. Perhaps the most discordant finding is that in 2009, 93% of the top charities monitored their names, causes or other pertinent information and 73% of US colleges and universities monitored buzz online about their school — while only 68% of the Inc. 500 monitored their brands. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday is finally here, and I’m excited to say that this week we have some super-duper videos to share with you.  All week, as I discovered these clips, I was laughing, smiling and cocking my head in amazement that some of these things actually happened and were caught on tape.  So get ready to ROFL, grin from ear to ear, and get ready for the weekend with some of this week’s best viral videos!
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GetJar is second only to Apple’s iTunes in the world of mobile app providers. And as of this summer, the independent online store boasts just over 1 billion app downloads for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and other smartphones. Read the rest of this entry »