Microsoft is adding Hulu Plus to the Xbox Live online gaming service on Friday, expanding the system’s entertainment options in a very good way. Users who pay $7.99 a month can get access to the streaming movie and TV show service of Hulu via the Xbox 360.

The new system works with Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system, allowing you to speak voice commands or wave your arm in the air to pause, fast forward, rewind, or play a Hulu Plus show.

That’s nice, but the functionality is pretty much the same as with the previously launched Kinect-based Netflix service and the Zune videos service on the Xbox 360. On the one hand, we’ve seen this before and it’s not a novelty anymore. On the other, it’s smart for Microsoft to make motion-sensing and voice commands consistent across different video services.

Playing and controlling a movie using the Kinect user interface is kind of neat, but it’s also slow. That’s because Kinect makes you hold your hand up in the air until it clearly recognizes the gesture and verifies that you aren’t making a gesture inadvertently. You hold your hand on top of a circle overlay on your screen in order to select a video. That takes precious seconds to complete.

Kinect is imperfect as a gesture-control system because it takes seconds to complete a task. By contrast, I can use a game controller to make changes to a video, such as pausing it, in a fraction of a second. That matters because when you’re watching TV, you don’t want to waste your time. The voice-control feature of Kinect — which has multiple microphones and can discern voice commands — seems to work a little faster. But you still have to semi-shout the word “Xbox” before you can issue a command such as “Pause.” Sometimes the voice command doesn’t work.

Hulu Plus itself is a good addition to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which has become a full-fledged entertainment gateway. With Hulu Plus, Microsoft offers more options to its 50 million-plus Xbox Live members. Hulu Plus allows users to watch TV shows from ABC, Comedy Central, Fox, NBC, MTV and others. The first week of service is available for free.

Hulu Plus offers both hit TV shows and classic movies in high-definition streams, including current season episodes of shows like Modern Family, 30 Rock, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and others. You can also see back seasons of shows such as Lost or Battlestar Galactica.

Tags: Hulu Plus, Kinect

Companies: Microsoft

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In a counter-move against Zynga, game maker PopCap Games said today that it has acquired the San Francisco-based social game developer ZipZapPlay. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The move could be one of the first for a more aggressive PopCap, the Seattle-based makers of hit games from Bejeweled to Plants vs Zombies, as it tries to be more competitive in social games on Facebook, where Zynga dominates. San Francisco-based Zynga opened an office to recruit game developers in Seattle recently, and now PopCap is acquiring a game studio on Zynga’s home turf. It’s kind of like a tit for tat move in a very high stakes battle for the future of social games.

PopCap is increasing its efforts in part because it plans to file to go public in the second half of the year. John Vechey, co-founder of PopCap and head of its merger and acquisition efforts, said in an interview that the deal is a strategic one, not so much because ZipZapPlay has lots of users. On Facebook, ZipZapPlay’s Baking Life game has 3.2 million monthly active users. That’s small compared to Zynga’s 259 million monthly active users. Zynga’s huge user base has allowed it to buy 12 companies in 12 months.

“What was important to us was their willingness to experiment,” Vechey said. “They get how social gaming will evolve so that it will become actually social, with authentic social interactions. This is a strategic move with a lot of potential.”

In other words, a lot of so-called social games on Facebook tap your friends to do stuff for you, but they don’t actually require you to work together closely with your friends inside the game itself. Vechey acknowledged that PopCap competes with Zynga and that it had previously thought of opening its own office. With this acquisition, PopCap adds 17 new employees and a base to expand in San Francisco, which is the center of the social gaming industry. Curt Bererton and Mathilde Pignol, the top executives of ZipZapPlay, will continue to run the studio.

PopCap reported more than $100 million in revenues last year and it is one of the most successful independent game companies. But it was born in 2000, long before the era of social gaming. PopCap pioneered snack-like casual games with Bejeweled, which has been sold more than 50 million units.

PopCap has been adapting to the rapid rise of Facebook games and it has 16.3 million monthly active users. In that respect, it is playing catch-up with No. 1-ranked Zynga. PopCap has 4.3 million daily active users, or those who come back once a day, and it ranks No. 3 behind Zynga and Electronic Arts in that respect, according to AppData.

Vechey said he has been scouring through potential acquisitions for the past 18 months and found that ZipZapPlay is a nice cultural fit, since it focuses on design excellence in the same way that PopCap does. ZipZapPlay is at work on a new game that could be a big leap forward in social games, Vechey said. That game could come out this year. By the end of 2011, PopCap expects to have four or five games available on Facebook.

Overall, PopCap chief executive Dave Roberts said in a recent interview that PopCap’s aim is to diversify across the important platforms, including social, mobile, and the web. And it will also spread its focus on different geographies and types of games as well so that it can produce more predictable financial results.

Tags: Bejeweled, casual games, Plants vs. Zombies

Companies: Popcap Games, ZipZapPlay, Zynga

People: John Vechey

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Microsoft has a golden opportunity to win over some Sony PlayStation 3 users in the wake of the disastrous PlayStation Network outage. We’re conducting our own poll to see if users are so mad that they’re thinking about switching from Sony to Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service.

More than 77 million registered users had their personal data exposed, and possibly their credit card numbers stolen, due to a hacker attack against the PlayStation Network. One survey found that a fifth of PlayStation 3 owners are considering a switch to the Xbox 360 because of the data breach. If that happens, it could be a very big headache for Sony, as both consoles are still battling it out for the second place spot in the current generation console war, where billions of dollars in revenues are at stake.

The survey was conducted by CouponCodes4U and it queried 2,132 people across the U.S. It found that 89 percent of the PS 3 owners were concerned that their personal data may have been taken. About 65 percent said their trust in Sony and PSN had been greatly affected, and 21 percent said they were considering selling their PS 3 units and switching to the Xbox 360.

The tables are turned from a few years ago when Microsoft’s own PR disaster from Xbox 360 defects made users angry. Xbox 360 consoles were failing in large numbers due to manufacturing defects that led to overheating. Users were so irate that some vowed to switch to Sony or Nintendo. Please take our own poll below.

Online Surveys – Zoomerang.com

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Redbox is becoming the new Blockbuster Video with its chain of video rental kiosks. Now it is adding video game rentals for just $2 a day starting on June 17.

The company has been testing game rentals for two years and it plans to dramatically expand it at 21,000 of its 25,000 locations. The rentals cost a little more than its $1 a day rate for DVDs and $1.50 for Blu-ray movies. It will provide games for the Wii, Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. But it will not offer Nintendo DS games, which were tested in the pilot.

The kiosks will have a library of 20 game titles at the start and will expand that to 24 later. Redbox has put vending machine kiosks in places such as pharmacies, grocery stores, fast-food restaurants and others. Its timing has been impeccable, as video game and movie rental stores shut down all over the place. Yet many users aren’t quite making the leap to digital movie streaming.

Redbox has low-cost kiosks and it just might be able to become a major outlet for video game rentals with this strategy, which is kind of retro when you think about the major trend of digital downloading sweeping through both movies and games. The company will compete with the Netflix-like GameFly mail-order game rental service.

Tags: video game rentals

Companies: Redbox

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Marvel Entertainment’s new Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) super-hero game will be free to play, the company announced at a San Francisco event with game development partner Gazillion.

Considering the value of Marvel’s intellectual properties, a free-to-play business model for Marvel Universe Online is a bold strategy for the company because it means missing out on revenue from subscription fees and expansion packs.

Some of Marvel’s most loyal customers already purchase several comic books that average $3.99 each per month — an amount comparable with most monthly game subscriptions.
So, it’s not unreasonable to believe Marvel would have a built-in user base if it followed Blizzard’s pay to play strategy for World of Warcraft, which generates billions of dollars each year.

Although, Marvel has definitely examined pay-to-play options in the past and determined it was not a good fit. The company terminated its first attempt at creating an MMO with City of Heroes developers Cryptic Studios in 2008 and signed a 10-year deal with Gazillion the following year.

Similar to the business models of games like Farmville, Marvel’s MMO will generate some of its revenue by allowing players to purchase virtual goods that have value within the context of the game, according to Gazillion Entertainment President and Chief Operating Officer Dave Brevick.

But, don’t expect Marvel Universe Online to bear any resemblance to Farmville or Mafia Wars. Brevick’s industry credits include Diablo and Diablo II as well as 20 years of work in the gaming industry. At the event, he said the game will be a legitimately free experience that will also be  “…AAA (triple A), high-quality, high-production value experience that is very accessible.”

As for the game play, users will navigate through a vast, detailed environments recreated from Marvel’s most popular stories. And unlike DC Comics’ DCU Online game, which players create a custom character, users will choose to play as one of several classic super-heroes, like Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man and more.

Initially, the game will only be available for PCs, with support for other platforms to be announced at a later date, the company said. Marvel declined to comment on whether it would debut clips of the MMO at this year’s E3.

Tags: comic books, free-to-play, MMORPG

Companies: Gazillion Entertainment, Marvel

People: Dave Brevick

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Sony said today that the malicious attack against the PlayStation Network did not result in the loss of customers’ game data.

While the incident has been deeply embarrassing to Sony and frustrating to its 77 million registered users, it could have been much worse if Sony had actually irretrievably lost the hard-earned custom data of its users. Sony may have lost control of users’ credit card numbers (hackers are saying they have credit card numbers) and other personal data, but it hasn’t yet verified that.

On the PlayStation blog, Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold said that users’ download history, friends list, and console settings will not be affected by the outage. Once the network is brought back online, everything will still be there. Users’ trophies that were earned in single-player offline games will be intact when the service resumes.

Cloud-based game saves will also be retrievable. These are the saved game records that allow a user to return to the spot in a game where the player left off. Sony just started storing this data in the cloud to free up hard disk space on the PlayStation 3 consoles.

Some players play the massively multiplayer onilne games DC Universe Online and Free Realms on the PlayStation Network. Those PS 3 gamers have the option of paying subscription fees to Sony. Sony said it will figure out a way to “make good” for the lost paid time. It will also hold special events inside the games once they are back online.

Sony said it is evaluating ways to show its appreciation for the patience of users, but it didn’t go into details.

Tags: hackers, PlayStation Network, PSN

People: Patrick Seybold

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Hackers are saying on underground internet chat rooms that they are in possession of the credit card numbers of Sony’s PlayStation Network customers, the New York Times said.

If it’s true, that’s worrisome for Sony, which has been sued by angry users and which has yet to verify whether any of its customers credit card numbers — which Sony has said were encrypted — had been taken. Sony has sent warnings about the possible theft to more than 77 million registered PSN users. Since the whole user base may have been exposed, this case could be one of the largest hacks on record.

Security researchers said that they have seen discussions on the internet forums that indicate that the hackers have customer names, addresses, usernames, passwords and as many as 2.2 million credit card numbers. Kevin Stevens, senior threat researcher at the security firm Trend Micro, told the New York Times that he saw talk about how Sony hackers were hoping to sell the credit card list for more than $100,000. Stevens said one forum member told him the hackers had offered to sell the data back to Sony itself, but the hackers had not received a response from the company.

Several other security researchers confirmed the forum discussions, but it was not possible to verify whether the hackers indeed were in possession of the database. Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold said there was no truth, as far as he knew, that Sony was offered an opportunity to buy back the list. Matthew Solnik, a security consultant with iSEC Partners, said he has heard that the hackers made it into the main database, which would have given them the access to the credit card numbers.

Solnik said researchers believe that the hackers gained access to the database by hacking the PS 3 console and then moving from there to the company’s servers.

[image credit: Techchunks]

Tags: hackers, PlayStation Network, PSN

Companies: Sony

People: Patrick Seybold

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New York-based Ideeli, a members-only shopping community — known commonly as a “Flash sales” site — has raised $41 million in its third round of funding.

The site, which has over 4 million members, offers limited-time offers on apparel, accessories, shoes, and jewellery, intended to target men, women and children. Starting at 11am each day, sales last for 36 hours or until sold out, and have featured prominent brands such as Calvin Klein, D&G, French Connection.

Founder and CEO Paul Hurley told AllThingsD the equity will be used to “support growth and expansion plans, including new categories, partnerships, technology initiatives, marketing campaigns and hiring.”

With players such as Groupon and LivingSocial carrying multi-billion dollar valuations, the deal shopping space has been pulsating with a large amount of financial interest. Ideeli’s main and closest competitor, Gilt Groupe, has also raised up to $100 million, supposedly in talks to raise another $80 – $100 million from private market investors.

Ideeli was founded in 2007 and raised a $3.8 million round in December that year, following up with a $20 million round in 2008. Investors in its latest round, which brings its total funding to $64.8 million, include Next World Capital with Cue Ball Capital, StarVest Partners, Constellation Growth Capital and Kodiak Venture Partners.

Tags: coupons, deals, flash sales, shopping, social shopping

Companies: Gilt Groupe, Groupon, Ideeli, Living Social

People: Paul Hurley

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Kleiner Perkins-backed startup Cooliris recently announced a big shift in its strategy, launching a photo-sharing application called LiveShare. Now co-founder and chief executive Soujanya Bhumkar wants to make it clear that there are some big improvements on LiveShare’s roadmap.

Until now, the main features distinguishing LiveShare from the hordes of other photo-sharing apps were its slick design (most photo apps look good, but LiveShare took its cues from Cooliris’ previous product, a 3D wall for browsing photos, videos, and other media) and the way it allowed users to invite a different set of friends to view and contribute to each album.

LiveShare will do more to stand out with the new version of the app, which Bhumkar demonstrated a for me earlier this week. He put a big emphasis on speed — when users upload photos to LiveShare, their friends should be able to see them instantly. You can see the app in action in the demo video at the end of this post. And yes, when Bhumkar demonstrated LiveShare earlier this week, it worked as quickly as it does in the video.

But why is it important to be “really, really real-time” rather than “almost real-time” (as Bhumkar put it)? Is it a big deal if shared photos take 10 or 30 or 60 seconds before they appear to your friends? In an email, Bhumkar argued:

If you want to share a moment or info with those close to you, you absolutely want to share it as it happens so they experience it: waiting for a photo to upload or a video to compress kills spontaneity and creates a time-lapse experience that’s as frustrating as bad lip-syncing from a lazy bollywood singer.

That makes sense to me, especially when I think of the times I’ve tried to use well-funded photo-app Color in a group and become frustrated when a photo takes more than a few seconds to appear. And Bhumkar isn’t alone in this belief — I can’t say too much yet, but there will be at least one other app launching soon with similar real-time media-sharing aspirations.

Besides the speed, the app also shows off LiveShare’s plans beyond photo-sharing. It features link- and video-sharing at a similar speed. The videos are limited to 15 seconds each and can be watched within the app. Tapping on a link opens a mini-browser within LiveShare where you can peruse the article or Web page in question.

There’s no release date for the new version of the app yet. Bhumkar said that even though the new features were built on the iPad, he eventually plans to add them across LiveShare’s platforms, including iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and the Web.

Tags: LiveShare

Companies: Cooliris

People: Soujanya Bhumkar

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Japan-based Panasonic announced today that it will cut 17,000 jobs worldwide through March 2013 and reduce the number of its business divisions from five to three.

Panasonic reported a $499 million loss for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2011, largely due to $61 billion in restructuring costs. The restructuring will be done during fiscal year 2012. Panasonic expects that synergies from the restructuring will contribute $735 million to its annual operating profit.

The company said that the Japanese earthquake and tsunami had an impact of at least $258 million. Operations at Panasonic’s factories have been recovering but disruptions in the supply chain still affect the company’s operations.

The company could not give any forecasts to fiscal year 2012 because the full damage of the disaster cannot yet be calculated. Panasonic has been hurt by competition from South Korea, including Samsung and LG.

Tags: layoffs, Reorganization

Companies: Lg, Panasonic, Samsung

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Kleiner Perkins-backed startup Cooliris recently announced a big shift in its strategy, launching a photo-sharing application called LiveShare. Now co-founder and chief executive Soujanya Bhumkar wants to make it clear that there are some big improvements on LiveShare’s roadmap.

Until now, the main features distinguishing LiveShare from the hordes of other photo-sharing apps were its slick design (most photo apps look good, but LiveShare took its cues from Cooliris’ previous product, a 3D wall for browsing photos, videos, and other media) and the way it allowed users to invite a different set of friends to view and contribute to each album.

LiveShare will do more to stand out with the new version of the app, which Bhumkar demonstrated a for me earlier this week. He put a big emphasis on speed — when users upload photos to LiveShare, their friends should be able to see them instantly. You can see the app in action in the demo video at the end of this post. And yes, when Bhumkar demonstrated LiveShare earlier this week, it worked as quickly as it does in the video.

But why is it important to be “really, really real-time” rather than “almost real-time” (as Bhumkar put it)? Is it a big deal if shared photos take 10 or 30 or 60 seconds before they appear to your friends? In an email, Bhumkar argued:

If you want to share a moment or info with those close to you, you absolutely want to share it as it happens so they experience it: waiting for a photo to upload or a video to compress kills spontaneity and creates a time-lapse experience that’s as frustrating as bad lip-syncing from a lazy bollywood singer.

That makes sense to me, especially when I think of the times I’ve tried to use well-funded photo-app Color in a group and become frustrated when a photo takes more than a few seconds to appear. And Bhumkar isn’t alone in this belief — I can’t say too much yet, but there will be at least one other app launching soon with similar real-time media-sharing aspirations.

Besides the speed, the app also shows off LiveShare’s plans beyond photo-sharing. It features link- and video-sharing at a similar speed. The videos are limited to 15 seconds each and can be watched within the app. Tapping on a link opens a mini-browser within LiveShare where you can peruse the article or Web page in question.

There’s no release date for the new version of the app yet. Bhumkar said that even though the new features were built on the iPad, he eventually plans to add them across LiveShare’s platforms, including iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and the Web.

Tags: LiveShare

Companies: Cooliris

People: Soujanya Bhumkar

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99designs, the popular site where startups and other small businesses can crowdsource their graphic design needs, has raised $35 million in a first round of funding from Accel Partners.

A first round of this size may seem like another sign of a venture capital bubble, but 99designs isn’t your typical early-stage investment. It was founded in February 2008, and has been bootstrapped and profitable until now. Customers can buy customizable logo designs off-the-shelf (metaphorically speaking) for just $99, or they can host design contests for things like logos and websites, where they only pay for the design that they like best.

99designs says that it has hosted more than 75,000 designs already and that it has paid designers $19 million to-date.

Accel is most famous for being an early investor in Facebook, but it has also succeeded in bringing relatively mature, bootstrapped companies into the venture capital fold in the past, most notably with Atlassian, a project-management company that raised a $65 million first round led by Accel last year. In fact, Atlassian and 99designs also share an Australian origin — 99designs is based in Melbourne and San Francisco.

Angle investors Michael Dearing, Dave Goldberg, Stewart Butterfield, and Anthony Casalena also participated in the round.

“99designs caught my attention when I realized that nearly every one of the early stage companies and entrepreneurs I work with was turning to them to get great design work done,” Dearing said in a press release. “The team has created a marketplace that is easy for companies to get onboard with, and also a boon for designers who can go after any of the hundreds of jobs open at any one time.”

Companies: 99designs, Accel Partners

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One potential suspect behind Sony’s massive PlayStation Network security breach was 21-year old George Hotz, AKA Geohot, who recently settled a lawsuit with the company over hacking into the PlayStation 3’s hardware. But in a blog post today, Hotz denies that he had anything to do with the PSN attack.

Assuming he’s telling the truth (“I’m not crazy, and would prefer to not have the FBI knocking on my door,” he said), that leaves plenty of other suspects for Sony to consider, like the patchwork group of hackers calling themselves “Anonymous,” who have been known to cause distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

Hotz clearly doesn’t have much sympathy for Sony. He says in the blog post that Sony invited the attack by making enemies of hackers: “The fault lies with the executives who declared a war on hackers, laughed at the idea of people penetrating the fortress that once was Sony, whined incessantly about piracy, and kept hiring more lawyers when they really needed to hire good security experts. Alienating the hacker community is not a good idea.”

He also makes sure to separate the sort of hacking that he does from the PSN attacks: “Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool, hacking into someone else’s server and stealing databases of user info is not cool,” he said. “You make the hacking community look bad, even if it is aimed at douches like Sony.”

One potential project Hotz says he was working on was a PlayStation Network alternative that jailbroken (or hacked) PS3s could use to play multiplayer games and download homebrewed software. That project ultimately never happened once Sony set its legal hounds on him.

Hotz went on to say that he bets “Sony’s arrogance and misunderstanding of ownership put them in this position” — a common sentiment among the hacking community.

“Sony execs probably haughtily chuckled at the idea of threat modeling. Traditionally the trust boundary for a web service exists between the server and the client,” he said. “But Sony believes they own the client too, so if they just put a trust boundary between the consumer and the client (can’t trust those pesky consumers), everything is good. Since everyone knows the PS3 is unhackable, why waste money adding pointless security between the client and the server? This arrogance undermines a basic security principle, never trust the client.”

He suggests that the hacker shouldn’t sell the stolen private data (which includes credit card numbers and would likely fetch a high price in some circles), and that he’d love to see a breakdown of just how the hack was completed. But with Sony and law enforcement on red alert to find the culprit, I don’t suspect we’ll see a breakdown of the attack anytime soon.

Tags: Geohot, hacks, Playstation 3, PlayStation Network, PS3, PSN, security

Companies: Sony

People: George Hotz

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Verzion announced this morning that service has been restored to its 4G LTE network, following a nationwide outage that lasted more than 24 hours. I can vouch that it’s back, since I’m publishing this blog post using my Verizon 4G USB modem. And while I’m glad the network has returned, the outage has shaken my already wavering confidence in Verizon.

Some personal context: I was a happy customer of a Verizon 3G modem for more than a year when a salesperson persuaded me to make the switch to 4G. I was told that it would not only give me a faster connection, but Verizon would actually switch me to a cheaper plan to save me a few dollars a month. It seemed like there was no downside, so I made the switch. (Since the salesperson contacted me a few days before the launch of the Verizon iPhone, I wondered if the carrier was trying to offload some of its data-intensive 3G users to clear the way for the iPhone. When I I asked a Verizon spokesperson if this was true, she denied it.)

Since then, however, I’ve frequently regretted the move. Yes, the 4G network is faster … when I can actually connect. Unfortunately, the connection gets dropped frequently, or it fails to connect in the first place. That’s especially true when I’m on the move. Trying to connect while in a train or a car is almost as bad as trying to make a call in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood while on my AT&T iPhone. I never had any of these problems on 3G.

Now, you may just chalk this up as a personal grievance, rather than a broader issue with Verizon’s network. After all, VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi has a 4G modem from Verizon too, and when I complained to him he seemed slightly mystified. (I’ve also emailed Verizon to see if it wants to comment, and I’ll update if I get a response.)

But yesterday’s outage confirmed my sense that, despite Verizon’s statements to the contrary, the technology has some real issues. I mean, I may complain about unreliable service from AT&T, but during my time as a customer, I’ve never completely lost data usage for more than 24 hours. And while Verizon said that 4G users would still be able to make calls despite the outage, that didn’t do me a lot of good — I pay Verizon $60-ish a month because I need to be able to write and publish from anywhere, not “almost anywhere, assuming you’re not moving, and assuming we’re not having any serious network issues.” Yesterday’s outage meant that I had to waste a lot of time wandering downtown San Francisco in search of WiFi, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid.

So while others complain that the Verizon iPhone doesn’t support 4G yet, I’m wondering: Can I have my 3G back now?

Tags: 4G

Companies: Verizon

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Heyzap launched a way for gamers to “check in” to mobile games on Android a couple of months ago and it has already reached 4.6 million users.

A total of 72 games use Heyzap’s platform, which creates a social network on top of Android where users can show others what games they are playing at any given moment. The progress shows that the “check-in” phenomenon created by Foursquare can also work to create interest-based groups on mobile platforms. And these interest groups can become social networks unto themselves, creating value because they bring together users who want to get to know each other.

Heyzap has basically added a social layer on top of Android. Gamers can share games with each other, helping to solve the big discovery problem on mobile platforms, where there are hundreds of thousands of apps and no fantastic way to sort through them all. The platform makes games more viral and discoverable.

“We are creating the social graph of mobile games,” said Jude Gomila, co-founder of Heyzap in San Francisco.

Developers integrate the Heyzap mobile software development kit into their Android games. Some of the top games that use Heyzap include Crazy Snowboard, XConstruction Lite, Math Maniac, and Slot Machine. Gomila downloaded a bunch of the games himself and wound up with 200 titles that maxed out the available storage on his phone.

One of the cool things about the platform is that it reveals which games are the hottest at any given moment. Once the number of users becomes much bigger, the system should deliver very useful analytics for developers. Already, the developers get a dashboard view of how their apps are spreading through mobile platforms.

Heyzap has raised $3.65 million from Union Square Ventures. The company was founded in 2008 by Gomila and Immad Akhund. Rivals include OpenFeint, Scoreloop, Ngmoco and PapayaMobile.

Once a user checks in, he or she can share information with friends on Facebook, Twitter and Heyzap’s own network. Right now, Heyzap wants the technology to spread fast and so isn’t monetizing the app. The company’s core business is monetizing just fine and allows Heyzap to experiment and invest in new platforms in pursuit of a larger user base, Gomila said. Once it has the user base, it will figure out how to monetize.

Tags: mobile social network

Companies: Heyzap, Ngmoco, OpenFeint, PapayaMobile, Scoreloop

People: Immad Akhund, Jude Gomila

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