>Are you into developing the next wave of social gaming applications? Want to attend the 2008 Tokyo game show? Well if you are a developer of games and live in China, Japan, Korea, or India (e.g. not a reader of this blog), you can have the chance to win a trip! The significant part of this announcement is how heavily MySpace is promoting their platform as a place for games.

Social gaming has emerged as a highly competitive and rapidly growing space. Just this week the Social Gaming Network announced a round of funding from Jeff Bezos’ personal venture capital company. Zynga, a competitor to SGN, also announced today the hiring of two new executives as the company continues to expand.

This is definitely shaping up to be a fast growing segment on social platforms and possibly the largest segment next to applications which simply extend existing platform functionality. I’m not sure about other user habits of social games but I tend to pick one game and stick to it. Currently my game of choice? Mouse Hunt on Facebook.

As the platforms continue to mature, I have a feeling that we will see larger players enter the social gaming space. Another area of growth? The iPhone. With the launch of applications, more people are turning to their mobile devices for simple games and thanks to location aware systems on the iPhone it is now possible to build in social functionality to these games.

Social gaming is clearly at an early stage but MySpace’s announcement today makes it clear that social gaming will continue to be one of the most significant segments on social platforms. What’s your favorite “social game” to play?

This morning, the Social Gaming Network is announcing that they have accepted an investment by Bezos Expeditions, the fund which manages Jeff Bezos’ personal venture capital investments. The most recent investment we covered by Bezos Expeditions was Animoto’s round.

As usual we don’t know how much money has been invested but given that Bezos Expeditions has invested over $70 million in tech startups, my guess it is in the millions. Back in May SGN announced a $15 million Series A round lead by Greylock Partners and Founders Fund. These investments make it clear that many large players in Silicon Valley foresee a great future ahead for social gaming.

The real challenge ahead for many of the social gaming companies will be competition from traditional competitors such as SEGA or Electronic Arts. EA has already launched applications on Facebook and SEGA has started focusing on the iPhone where a new wave of social games will begin to pop-up. While we are still at the early stage of social gaming, I believe there is a broader shift toward more engaging games and a heavier feature set.

This is great news for the Social Gaming Network though and it will be interesting to see how this space continues to grow over the next 6 to 12 months.

Last week I interviewed Mark Pincus of Zynga gaming network. At the time, Zynga was the largest gaming network on the social networks. This week the tides have turned with Social Gaming Network’s acquisition of Free Gifts, Nicknames, Oregon Trail and Friend Block. While these aren’t necessarily games they are some of the most active applications on Facebook.

Just like Zynga, Social Gaming Network has built their own toolbar which sits at the top of their games and helps distribute users across their network. The platform enables any developer to become part of their network and benefit from some of the traffic being generated by the network as a whole. Currently Zynga and Social Gaming network sit at the top of the food chain but there are a number of other competitors that are joining the race.

While it will be extremely challenging for new entrants to compete thanks to the decrease in application virality, an evolution of gaming technologies could easily bring about new competitors. Social Gaming network is also rumored to be raising another round of funding. It will be interesting to see how this space pans out.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to interview Mark Pincus of Zynga gaming network. Zynga is currently one of the most dominant social gaming companies on the web. Social gaming in general is a nascent industry but is gaining a lot of momentum and a lot of attention as participants are attracting millions of users to simple applications. You may have experience playing games such as Scrabulous on Facebook. That’s only one social game (not produced by Zynga).

Zynga now has the largest Texas Hold’em poker game on the web with a presence across a number of social networks including Mysapce and Facebook. Back in February we covered the launch of the Zynga gaming platform which enabled developers to leverage some of the traffic being generated by Zynga’s overall network. At the time, Social Gaming Network (a Zynga competitor), also launched their own network. Both systems ultimately provide the same thing but currently Zynga appears to have significantly more traffic.

In the podcast Mark brings up some of the statistics being generated by their network which are substantial. We also had a chance to discuss Mark’s thoughts on the future of social gaming and where this space is headed overall. There were a few points during the interview when my Skype had some hiccups but through context you can figure out what Mark was saying since it is no more then quarter-of-a-second interruptions. Hope you enjoy!

 

 Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga [23:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yesterday evening Kristen Nicole published details about a new social gaming feed that SGN, the social gaming network, plans on launching in the coming days. The new feature enables users to display all of the gaming activities that they are active in on the social web.

While I think this could be an extremely useful tool I am also rapidly realizing how the newsfeed is becoming just as ubiquitous as a user login. If this does indeed take place (which I would predict it does), we are going to witness an extension of what already has been created in “Web 2.0″: the duplication of feature sets across every product offering.

How many feeds can we possibly create? Don’t get me wrong. Creating unique feeds for each type of activity makes a lot of sense. Then again, should users be the ones that are able to do this? Seriously there should be one feed tool that enables us to customize all of the news that we would like to have displayed. I don’t want to be too cynical but we are seeing the creation of a type of redundancy that is unnecessary.

I don’t need a bazillion feeds, I don’t need thirty sites to log into and I definitely don’t need multiple identities. So how do we get to one? It’s such a simple number but such a challenging target. Am I overly cynical (if I am it’s because it is so late at night ;))?

One of the most explosive areas of social applications is currently gaming. It’s also garnering a lot of media attention. Just this morning the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an interesting piece on the highly competitve and rapidly evolving space. Just about every leader in the social gaming space is interviewed in the article.

I did a little research myself to see how the gaming space is panning out. Right now Zynga Game Network, lead by Mark Pincus, is leading the pack. They have continued to experience growth on Facebook and now dominate the almost 10 of the top 20 applications on MySpace. This space is still in the infant stage though and naming a winner in the space would be absolutely ridiculous. Every day I receive a new press release from another new gaming platform.

Mytopia is one company trying to conquer the social gaming space. The company’s unique twist is that they are taking all the best components of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and integrating those features into their games. Just as many of the other social gaming startups offer, they too offer a messaging platform across all of their games enabling complete communication among your friends no matter what game you are playing.

Shervin Pishevar, CEO of Social Gaming Network, accurately states in today’s chronicle article, “We’re in the Pong stages of social gaming.” There is a lot of innovation that will take place over the coming years and we are going to see a boom in the social gaming player user base. Anybody can participate in social games and that’s the best part. Social gaming will succeed at targeting the same base of users that Nintendo effectively targeted with the launch of the Wii.

Do you have any favorite social games that you play on a regular basis?

Mytopia Screenshot

Zynga Traffic Chart

SGN Traffic Chart

The battle continues to become the leader in the social gaming space. There was a lot of debate over the weekend surrounding Fred Wilson’s claim that the Social Gaming Network is not a legitimate competitor to the Zynga gaming network. Tonight, Erick Schonfeld has posted that the Social Gaming Network has added Jetman and Free Gifts to their gaming network. This is not an acquisition but instead a partnership.

That’s not where it ends though. The drama is heating up as Caroline McCarthy emphasized last week. Following Schonfeld’s post which included a statement from Shervin stating “If you want to be a developer platform, you probably shouldn’t be copying developers’ games. If you want to compete with them, fine. That is why they are joining us,” Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, sent in a message contesting Schonfeld’s post:

Wow erick.

A) you give them credit for traffic they don’t even own
And
B) you won’t give us credit for traffic (clz apps) we do actually own.

Do you even care how hypocritical sherwin is to accuse me of copycat games when he copied free gifts on bebo and risk on fb? Getting the irony? He is partnering with an app he literally copied in december while accusing me of this?

Erick, with all due respect I’m wondering if you work for sgn now?

There is a ton of drama stirring. While it may not all be justified, the highly competitive duo are each working to build gaming empires on the back of Facebook applications. It’s a high risk scenario and in high risk situations tempers flare. I’d expect the drama to continue.