Girls In Tech

The Flash Gaming Summit is back for its 2nd year! Join in for a one day conference dedicated to fostering the growth and success of the Flash games community. The conference will bring together leaders in the flash game space to share industry insights and strategies on successful game design, development and monetization.

The program includes panel discussions plus a keynote by Jameson Hsu, CEO of Mochi Media. Other panelists include:

* Chris Hughes, FlashGameLicense.com

* Jim Greer, Kongregate

* Vikas Gupta, Social Gold

* Renaun Erickson, Adobe

* Mark Skaggs, Zynga

*David Stewart, Playdom

They will speak on topics such as “Money in Flash: Next Gen Monetization of Flash Games,”  “Everything About Sponsorship & Licensing” and “4 keys to a successful social game that all game developers should know.”

For more info. & to register, go to: http://www.flashgamingsummit.com/index.html

Jump to Register: click here

Tags: Flash Gaming Summit, San Francisco, Social Gaming, Social Gold, Vikas Gupta, Virtual Currency
Posted in San Francisco | No Comments »

Women in Games International (WIGI), in partnership with Social Gold, today announced that it will host its 3^rd annual mixer at GDC 2010 on Wednesday, March 10 from 6:00pm – 9:00pm. This year’s industry exclusive VIP party will be will be held at one of the most unique venues in San Francisco — the California Historical Society Museum located a few blocks away from Moscone Center. The reception will bring together innovative developers, publishers, and top leaders from the industry along with great food, drinks, and plenty of excitement. 

Women in Games International works to promote leadership, inclusion, and advancement of women in the global games industry, and is centered around the philosophy that diversifying the game development, media, academic and publishing workplace results in not only a more equitable space, but better products.

“For the 3^rd annual GDC event, we’re focused on expanding awareness among growing and emerging markets within the games industry,” said Asra Rasheed of Women in Games International. “We are delighted to have Social Gold as our title sponsor as they represent our initiative to diversify and encourage involvement from other areas of gaming.

Social Gold provides a full-featured virtual economy platform that enables publishers to create and manage their own white-labeled virtual currency, provide an unparalleled payments experience to their users, and optimize their virtual economy using robust analytics. The company has an experienced and dedicated team founded by former leaders of Amazon.com, who were responsible for engineering such products as Amazon.com’s Flexible Payments Web Service and Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. 

“As the industry-leading virtual economy platform for powering virtual currency and payment solutions, we are pleased to be officially co-hosting this year’s GDC VIP reception with Women In Games International,” said Vikas Gupta, founder and CEO of Social Gold. “With the growth of the virtual goods market, we see many opportunities to foster this growth among our industry peers, including events like this reception hosted by WIGI.”

Tags: 2010, GDC, girls in tech, Micropayments, party, Social Gold, Virtual Currency, Women in Games International
Posted in San Francisco | No Comments »

Girls in Tech was on the scene yesterday as Virtual Goods Summit 2009 kicked off with VGS University.  Hundreds of people came out to the half day seminar to learn from case studies and presentations by Linden Lab, Mochi Media, IMVU, Gaia Online, Ning, Viximo, Shufflebrain and others.

The afternoon panel on the Payments Landscape featuring SuperRewards, TrialPay, BOKU, PlaySpan, and ORCA garnered a packed ballroom.  Charles Hudson, host of VGS09, moderated the panel and asked whether it’s a good or bad thing that the payments space is so chockfull of players.  Not surprisingly, the panel thought it was a good thing – and that it speaks to the vast potential opportunity for virtual goods in games.  They also agreed that the need for payment solution providers is high since payments are complex, requiring relationships with often hundreds of banks and wireless carriers if you take into account the international landscape.  Then there’s the sticky issue of fraud and security.  Finally, there’s scale of economies, and the idea that a game producer should concentrate on making great games instead of getting caught up with building a payment solution.  Overall, more payment providers means more choice for game publishers, and more pressure for payment providers to deliver better products and customer service.

The panel shared the following statistics: For free to play games on social networks, virtual goods conversion for those who actually pay is 3-4%. This of course varies depending on the virality and engagement quality of the game.  Lex Bayer from PlaySpan suggested that for each daily active user associated with a game on a social network, there is ten dollars of annual revenue potential.  Therefore, if you have five million DAU’s your potential revenue is $50 million in annual revenue.  Not shabby.

Big revenue potential and a young market makes for great energy, an eagerness for learning, sharing, and collaborating, with a good measure of competition and creativity thrown in.  This is going to be one good summit.  Join us today for part two of the third annual Virtual Goods Summit taking place today at the Westin in downtown San Francisco.  And stick around for the after party that Girls in Tech is co-hosting with Offerpal at Harlot nightclub!

Tags: Charles Hudson, Games, Lindin Lab, Mochi Media, Ning, social networks, Super Rewards, Tina Tran, TrialPay, Virtual Currency, Virtual Good Summit, Virutal Payments
Posted in All Chapters, Events | No Comments »

Ever wonder who is behind all those virtual games and how they are such a boon in the social web community these days?  Who ismaking money from them and how do they do it?  Anu Shukla, CEO of Offerpal Media is a master of both!

Anu founded Offerpal Media in June 2007, the first “Managed Offer Platform” provider for social applications in this space.  She has created a unique company where developers, social publishers, mobile developers, and advertisers, alike, can capitalize on the ever-expanding & profitable social media market. Offerpal allows developers to monetize their games, while advertisers benefit as well. In one example, a 22-year old game developer was written a 6-figure check by successfully utilizing Offerpal’s platform.

“A couple of years ago, we looked at the social networking landscape, and saw that a lot of people were spending time on social networks and playing their favorite games and applications, but monetization was still not happening, “ says Anu Shukla, CEO and Founder of Offerpal Media. “We looked at this as a very interesting problem and came up with concept of a managed offer platform which is now Offerpal media. We monetize anybody that has virtual currency, digital goods, or subscription-based services with a variety of payment methods and advertising offers. It has really taken off, and I’m pleased to see that applications are being built to promote the use and monetization of virtual currency.”

Offerpal Media’s network reaches more than 50 million social networking users in total, spanning hundreds of popular social applications on Facebook, hi5, Bebo, Friendster and other leading social networks.
They have won several awards, including being an AO Global 250 winner in 2008, among the Top 50 TiE Startups in 2009, and an AO OnMedia 100 winner.  I am sure many more accolades will come their way.

To read more about Offerpal Media, see their website at:
http://offerpal.com/.

Tags: anu ahukla, gaming, Monetization, Virtual Currency
Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco | No Comments »

As the holidays are fully under way with parties, sending out holiday cards, and exchanging gifts, the same spirit can be found in the world of social networks.

Hi5, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing social networks, launches it’s International Virtual Gifts Store. Initially the store will offer an assortment of 36 virtual gifts representing a variety of the world’s customs and cultures. This will give users a chance to celebrate their culture with their family and friends.

Some of the gifts that will be available are a virtual ‘Rosca’, which is a Mexican cake that is traditionally eaten on January 6th for the celebration of the ‘Three Kings Day’.  Also a dreidel, which is a very popular toy for children celebrating the Jewish holiday Hanukkah. As well as many other ornaments and symbols from a variety of cultures around the world.

This is a great way to highlight and celebrate the diversity of the Hi5 user base. Happy Holidays! Felices Fiestas! Chag Sameach!

Tags: "Lucia Giacomantonio", Adriana Gascoigne, celebrate, culture, dreidel, gifts, giving, hi5, holidays, Los Angeles, Robyn Cohen, rosca, San Francisco, season, social networks, Virtual Currency, Virtual Gifts, Virtual Goods, Virtual Worlds, world
Posted in Los Angeles | 1 Comment »