Yoo-Mee Launches New Social Gaming Platform

Today startup Hooked Media announced the launch of its new social gaming platfrom Yoo-Mee, which allows social game developers to easily port their games to a multitude of different sites, devices, and social networks. Yoo-Mee lets developers convert games into a standard social format that can be easily embedded into any Web destination, similar to Flash. Yoo-Mee's goal is to help game publishers monetize better, by making it easier to get their games featured on more Websites and introducing virtual goods revenue. 

YooMee supports Facebook Connect as well as Twitter and MySpace, making it easy for developers to integrate games already established on social networks. For casual games, it gives users the ability to issue challenges and hold tournaments, somewhat similar to Scoreloop's iPhone platform. It will act as a social platform, tracking connections between users, while also keeping track of a user's high scores and amounts of virtual currency. 

Yoo-Mee will track two types of virtual currency, a time-based currency called Tokens and a cash-based currency called Gold. Users must spend real money to earn Gold because they'll be able to wager it against other players in one-on-one game challenges. Winners of these challenges will earn real money somehow, though Yoo-Mee has not yet revealed how this works. Developers will have direct access to the Yoo-Mee platform to create custom tournaments for their games. 

The target audience for Yoo-Mee's product and the games it wants to promote is women in their forties, one of the dominant demographics in both social and casual gaming. The Yoo-Mee platform will monetize through a combination of advertising, virtual goods, and charging for access to features like tournaments. Web sites carrying games will get a cut of virtual currency sales made through Yoo-Mee implementations on their site. 

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