What has large cuddly pandas, New York rock n’ roll, virtual coins and talking squirrels?  It’s Music Pets, one of the fastest growing games on the social gaming scene.  The game has accrued 700,000 users in only a month, and is one of the most talked about applications on my news feed.  The game is best described as a cross-breed between Pet Society and the Pandora music service…  Yes, you read that right.  Read on for the review!
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MetroGames, an Argentenian social games developer, has just secured a $5 million round of series A funding from social games developer Playdom.  The investment will be used to expand MetroGames existing selection of games and also further development on their games platform.  The release is available here.

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If you have or are planning to get into social game development on a tiny budget, you need to get financially creative and learn to bootstrap. The practice of bootstrapping a startup is essentially an act of balancing costs against revenues, and it applies as much to a game development studio as any other business. Do it right, and your business will likely survive long enough for your games to have a chance of success — something that’s a necessity given how many small studios and bedroom entrepreneurs are jumping into the social game development space. Here are a few tips on bootstrapping as relevant to game development.
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EA is promoting Saboteur, one of their newest console titles, by creating a Facebook quiz application that involves videos and content from the game. The application isn’t a full-fledged game, but does have a quiz element and leaderboards to compete with friends. There are also prizes to the top players, including an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas.
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Just as farming games like (Lil) Green Patch, Farm Town and Farmville once surged in popularity, the city-building genre is rapidly gaining players.  Playdom’s new Social City has gained 5,600,000 users in 2 weeks and is an excellent example of a city building game; it has great graphics, a pleasant interface and some great social features.  On the other hand, the game seems to be more about the “City” and less about the “Social”.  We review the game below.
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With Flash Gaming Summit (FGS) and Game Developers Conference 2010 (GDC) now over, we’d like to take the opportunity to reflect on some of the key takeaways. One of the most discussed areas was career opportunities in the gaming industry, particularly in the area of social gaming. Here’s a few of the opportunities gleaned from various sessions, panels and interviews last week.
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Zynga just launched their newest title, Poker Blitz for Facebook, and from our early looks it seems to be Texas Hold ‘Em meets Farmville.  The game is a simplified version of texas hold’ em poker with cutesy graphics and powerups that affect gameplay.  The game seems to be inviting new demographics to enjoy the game of poker, and my first impressions say that they’ve succeeded.
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While we’re always trying to cover the latest news in the social web economy, sometimes it simply isn’t possible to get all of our stories out. That’s why once in a while we will provide a roundup of some of the more interesting social media stories from around the web. Below are some of the more intriguing stories that took place yesterday.
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Do you remember ICQ (”I Seek You”)? It was one of the first desktop download chat applications and was sold to AOL for $400 million in 1998. Strangely, it fell off the map after the acquisition, but has since resurfaced as a type of community-based social network that leverages Facebook and Twitter. We take a look below.
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To be known as a “social game”, games need to have a number of elements that encourage player engagement amongst friends.   Players need to be able to interact with their real world friends in many ways: they want to compete, cooperate, show off to and taunt friends.  To better understand the ’social’ in social games, we put together a list of the 7 elements that should be included in every social game.
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