OMGPOP Raises $5 Mil On Strength Of Virtual Goods Potential

Yesterday casual gaming portal OMGPOP, formerly known as Iminlikewithyou, revealed that it had raised a second $5 million round of venture capital on the strength of its plans to begin monetizing the site through offers of premium service subscriptions, virtual goods, and virtual currency. The round was lead by Bessemer Venture Partners with past investors Spark Capital and and Baseline contributing, as reported by Venture Beat.

CEO Dan Porter outlines OMGPOP's revenue plans as beginning in late Q2
with the rollout of the premium subscription accounts, which offer
players exclusive features like faster EXP gain, more control over
matchmaking, and customization options. After that OMGPOP plans to roll
out a virtual currency that can be purchased via RMT or earned through
gameplay. The currency will be used to purchase two different types of
virtual goods: gameplay enhancement items and customization items for
use on profiles and "characters."

Currently half a million users come to OMGPOP and spend around 180
hours per month playing the site's casual game offerings. Most of the
games are designed to use  social features like automatic matchmaking,
scoreboards, and instant messaging to help hold a player's interest for
as long as possible.Generally friction for entering a game is low,
requiring no more than a few mouse clicks.

OMGPOP announced its plans to move toward virtual goods for monetization as early as November 2008, when the CEO was still Charles Forman and the company was still called Iminlikewithyou. It was known that the portal wanted a different name last month, but the disclosure of the second venture capital round is also the first disclosure of the portal's new name. Quite a few games portals, such as Kongregate, have incorporated virtual currency and microtransactions successfully. There's at the moment no real reason for doubting that OMGPOP can repeat that success, provided it keeps the quality of its games and community offerings high.

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