News Corp To Spinout Or Sell MySpace

By On January 13, 2011 · 1 Comment

News Corp has announced to employees that it intends to spinout or sell its MySpace social network, according to Bloomberg. The announcements come roughly a day after laying off nearly half of its existing staff. News Corp paid $580 million to acquire MySpace in 2005.  A spinout would require a venture capital or private equity firm [...]

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SCVNGR Raises $15M For Location-Based Social Game

By On January 4, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Location-based mobile social game SCVNGR has raised a $15 million round of investment funds at a $100 million valuation, led by European firm Balderton Capital with participation from Google Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. SCVNGR scored a lot of high-profile promotional deals in 2010, with its promotions including the Smithsonian, the New England Patriots, Coca-Cola, [...]

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Goldman Sachs, DST Invest $500M In Facebook

By On January 3, 2011 · 1 Comment

Goldman Sachs and Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies have invested another $500 million in Facebook in a transaction that values the company at $50 billion, according to the New York Times. Goldman Sachs plans to offer its private clients chances to invest in Facebook as part of the deal, which is expected to raise another [...]

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PopCap To Seek IPO In Second Half Of This Year

By On January 3, 2011 · 1 Comment

PopCap CEO Dave Roberts has says that his company plans to seek an IPO in the second half of 2011, according to an interview with Forbes. Roberts says that none of PopCap’s investors are pushing for the IPO, that it’s largely a matter of PopCap wanting to see “the markets align” before it goes public. [...]

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Zynga Takes Biggest Games-Related Investment Of The Year

By On December 22, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Zynga’s $150 million investment from SoftBank was one of the two largest sums invested in gaming-related companies this year, according to Venture Beat. It tied with $150 million invested in traditional games publisher ZeniMax Media by Providence Private Equity Partners.  Other top ten game-related investments of interest to Engage Digital’s coverage are $60 million invested [...]

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Meebo’s Series D Round Closes At $27.5M

By On December 21, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Meebo‘s Series D round of funding, reported previously at $25 million by Engage Digital, will actually close at $27.5 million. Meebo plans to use the funds from the round to further develop and promote its Web check-in feature when it launches next year. The Web check-ins are designed to reward user loyalty and help increase [...]

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NeoEdge Takes $3M For Ads In Social Games

By On December 21, 2010 · 2 Comments

San Francisco-based in-game ad firm NeoEdge has taken a $3 million growth round from MMV Financial. NeoEdge plans to bet big on display ads in social games as a major source of additional revenue for developers and exposure for brands that want more social media presence. NeoEdge was founded by former Electronic Arts employees, some [...]

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The9 Sets Up $100M Mobile Investment Fund

By On December 21, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Chinese online MMORPG publisher The9 is partnering with Chengwei Ventures, ChinaRock Capital Management, and China Renaissance K2 Ventures to establish a $100 million investment fund called Fund9 that will focus on Chinese and international mobile app and platform developers. Proposals can be submitted directly online to the fund investment committee for evaluation. The committee consists [...]

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Engage Digital Wrap-Up For The Week Of December 18, 2010

By On December 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Welcome to the Engage Digital Wrap-Up for the week of December 18, 2010. The Wrap-Up is where Engage Digital spotlights stories that we didn’t get to cover individually, but still make for interesting reading about the business of user engagement. Augmented Reality App Corrects Color-Blindness: Security researcher Dan Kaminsky is designing an augmented reality app [...]

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Meteor Games Adds Michael Walrath To Board Of Directors

By On December 15, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Meteor Games has added Michael Walrath, co-founder of the WGI Group and former CEO of RightMedia, to its Board of Directors. Walrath’s addition follows a series of strategic appointments by Meteor Games, which have included adding Barry Collier as Chief Technology Officer and Gary Cooperman as Chief Financial Officer. Meteor Games is funding the new [...]

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