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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I recently had the chance to talk with Manu Rekhi, the Vice President of Marketing, Business and Corporate Development with Lolapps and a former Senior Product Manager with Google.  Socialtimes.com had recently covered the implementation of Lolapps’ Dante’s Inferno application and we wanted to get a bit more information on the development of the application, the social gaming industry in general and the next steps for Lolapps.  Click below to listen.
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Social Gold, one of the leading virtual currency and monetization providers, has partnered with one of the largest casual game destinations on the web, Miniclip.com.  Miniclip’s 550 games and 57  million monthly players will now have the ability to use Social Gold to purchase in-game virtual goods with just a few clicks.  There were no details of any specific virtual goods at this time.
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MCV Games is reporting that BBC Worldwide is taking a step back into the gaming arena, having engaged in talks with publishers and developers to turn key franchises into multi-platform game products.   Although the timing has yet to be announced, BBC is looking to aim at a younger demographic and release games on the Wii, DS, iPhone and Facebook.  Judging by the lack of game specifics, the project is in a very early stage.
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Bebo Games has officially launched this week, with the company reporting successful numbers for developer and user interest. Bebo Games are offered through several partnerships with game developers, and the top-down approach taken by AOL-owned Bebo means a more uniform game experience for end users.

What Bebo has done with its game platform is integrate it with several of its existing features, such as chat, messages and other forms of notifications. This means that users can do things like challenge other users to a game directly from their chat window. It also means that developers have more immediate access to users for the purpose of encouraging them to return to their games.
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Today Live Gamer announced the acquisition of Twofish, the provider of virtual economy data solutions for casual and social gaming developers. The reason for the acquisition was to be able to provide gaming publishers with a full commerce solutions and monitoring system to help maximize revenue, in turn boosting Live Gamer’s micropayments solution. Back in March I first wrote about TwoFish who until then had been flying under the radar.
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How many Twitter messages have you received in the past few weeks, inviting you to play one of those mafia games? You may be getting more messages from friends inviting you to join their squad on World of Blood’s Twitter version of its existing games already available on Facebook and MySpace.

The new Twitter-based version is called 140Blood, and this particular adaptation leverages the microblogging platform to make the game social for players. Find friends, invite members to your squad, and share your adventure online via Twitter updates.
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Online game portal Bigpoint is launching a game called Seafight on hi5’s recently revealed Games Channel, making it immediately available in 20 languages. Play the game on hi5 here.

The realtime fantasy adventure game is among Bigpoint’s most popular. The Flash game will be made accessible for all hi5 users without having to install a seperate application. So far the supported launguages are English, German, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Potuguese, Romanian, Russina, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Seafight is the lastest in a growing string of games included on hi5 and integrated with the social network’s own virtual currency. Having yet another popular game with which to apply the hi5 Coins is a revenue-generating strategy that both hi5 and Bigpoint can take advantage of. It’s a necessary shift in payment options, considering the platform approach hi5 is taking to its own growing virtual economy.
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Yesterday PaidContent posted an article stating that Coinstar is preparing to sell cards for games and applications on Facebook. The cards will enabled buyers “to use them for subscriptions and tokens on casual games sites, to buy goods in virtual worlds, as well as for massively multiplayer online games.” Yes, that’s Coinstar, the company which let’s you turn your spare change into credit at the grocery store. Apparently the company will sell the cards via the Pay As You go racks within Cumberland Farms grocery stores.

Check out the Coinstar release.

Zynga’s at it again. The social gaming company has launched a mobile version of Scramble Live for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

The game itself, if you’re unfamiliar, is a grid of letters that can be connected to form words (think word search with options for all-directional word creation). While the words themselves cannot be re-ordered, the grid can be rotated in its entirety. This gives you additional perspectives in order to find your words. As with many other Zynga games made for the iPhone, Scramble Live takes advantage of the accelerometer, though this particular use case may not be as exciting as an action-oriented video game.

I gotta admit this game is pretty addictive for me in its online Facebook app version. I know… I’m a sucker for word games and they’re of the few things I get viciously competitive about. So I’ll be happy to take advantage of some of Scramble’s social features in order to beat all of you.
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