techcrunch

hi5, one of the world’s most popular social networks, has been actively remodeling its site to cater to the gaming industry. Last fall, the social network launched a totally revamped site that places a much stronger emphasis on games and virtual currency, along with a new avatar system. Today, the company is furthering this strategy with the acquisition of social gaming developer Big Six. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. See the full release below.

Big Six’s founders, Kevin Gliner, Monty Kerr and Chad Hansing, will join the hi5 management team. Hi5 says the deal will boost the social networks efforts in developing in commerce platforms and payment processing offerings. Right now, gaming is a central part of hi5’s strategy for growth so it makes sens for the social network to acquire innovative technologies and talent. The games section of hi5’s site accounts for around 1/3 of the site’s traffic, and direct user payments through the game already account for 15% of hi5’s revenue.

Apart from the currency and payments technology, Big Six’s social gaming platform will also become part of hi5. With the massive success of Zynga and Playfish, it makes sense that hi5 would try to create a social network that centers around gaming itself. hi5 has over 60 million members, which is a far cry from Facebook’s 400 million users.

continue reading

Tech Crunch

After lengthy negotiations, Electronic Arts closed it’s anticipated acquisition of social gaming startup Playfish for $275 million in cash…..

Social games are increasingly popular and Electronic Arts needed to buy one of the top players: Zynga, Playfish, or Playdom. The issue is that all three make their money from trading in-game virtual currency for advertising offers. Many of these offers are outright scams, which may explain why Playfish got less in upfront cash than the $350 million to $500 million range it was looking for, and the last $100 million is in the form of an earnout. Playfish perhaps also is not as exposed to these scammy offers as its competitors.

Continue reading …