The game, a mobile massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called Please Stay Calm, makes its debut today in the App Store, though only in Canada for now; Massive Damage is cutting its teeth in the Canadian market in preparation for an October U.S. launch. But the new game is worth a look no matter where you happen to live, because it uniquely combines location and personalization with tried and tested models of iPhone gaming success.

A unique twist on success

At its core, Please Stay Calm bears some strong similarities to games such as World War and Crime City. All the games use a store of energy that refreshes over time and can be spent to accomplish things or take action, like engage in combat, for example.

Please Stay Calm tweaks this, making it much more social through global in-game chat and a clever system whereby players (who take on the role of zombie apocalypse survivors) work together to fight off the undead threat. Also unique to Please Stay Calm is a strong focus on location; the game detects your real-life surroundings using the iPhone’s geolocation services, allowing you to set up a defensive bunker in your local Starbucks, for instance.

Massive Damage CEO and Co-Founder Ken Seto told me that the “core of [the] game is centered on providing a truly local social experience.” He says that “people have an affinity for their favorite spots like cafes, bars and even their offices.”

The major appeal of Please Stay Calm, according to Seto, is that “being able to upgrade a real-life location like your office as the biggest baddest safehouse in your city is quite the feeling.” In this way, the location-based elements of Please Stay Calm sound a bit like Foursquare’s mayor mechanism, except that you invest virtual resources, as well as time in a specific place in order to take control of it.

Location: more than just background

Location is about more than just where you do your zombie-fighting in Please Stay Calm. Seto also points out that “characters you run into in the game are local, and you’ll see them in-game time and time again.” City- and safehouse-specific chat will also soon be added, in addition to the global chat option that currently exists. Also, players near your location, and even “non-player Foursquare users automatically help you out if you’re fighting off the zombie hordes in the same location as them,” Seto says.

It’s exactly the kind of rich use of location mechanics that Ryan Kim recently suggested might be the way forward for mobile location services, but in this case, those added value features are extending, rather than replacing the gaming paradigm.

Blended revenue models to suit different tastes

Please Stay Calm is free to play, but uses in-app purchases to allow players to enhance their experience if they wish. The freemium model employed by Massive Damage for this game is designed to “allow people to spend as little or as much as they like,” according to Seto.

The game’s in-app purchases allow you to buy credits, which can then be used to upgrade items and locations. You can also earn credits in other ways, too, and the game does a good job of striking the right balance so that players don’t feel obligated to spend money. There’s also a clever secondary means of earning credits; players can opt to view 10-second videos (essentially advertisements) in exchange for free credits. Seto says they went with this approach because it keeps the app ad-free, while also providing a way for those unwilling to spend on in-app purchases to experience some of the advantages of the game’s freemium model.

For mobile gamers looking for something that takes advantage of the unique abilities of smartphone devices, instead of just making compromises regarding what iOS lacks, Please Stay Calm is an ideal title. Massive Damage also promises episodic content packages, with more cinematics, missions, zombies and weapons coming in at least 10 free chapter upgrades, so the action shouldn’t get stale. Also, the game features tons of great-looking original artwork that gives Please Stay Calm its own unique feel. If you’re Canadian, check it out now. If you’re not, mark your calendars for October and try to be patient.

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Facebook and Twitter share links are kind of a weird addition, if you ask me. Are people really all that likely to want to share basic information about available Apple products along with links for where to purchase them? I can see people maybe using it to brag about an upcoming purchase, but that’s about it. But it is something that’s been in place at the iTunes Store for a while now, and I suppose if even some people tweet or post about Apple products to their wall, the links will have done their job.

As mentioned, so far, these drop-down menus are only appearing for Mac Pro and iPod classic models. It’s possible that the role out was stopped midway, if it somehow contributed to the store outage, which web performance monitoring firm Catchpoint told GigaOM via email was network-related.

We’ll keep watching to see if these appear throughout the store, and let us know if you spot them anywhere else, too.

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1. Setup Facebook and Flickr albums in iPhoto

This is actually a tip for your Mac, but it makes it much easier to share photos to Facebook and Flickr if you set up Events in iPhoto ’11 that you can dump content to in bulk. Using uploading apps on the iPhone itself usually works best if you’re only doing one photo at a time, and if you’re on vacation, that can get annoying very fast. Connecting your social accounts in iPhoto will make it much easier to create organized albums on Facebook and Flicker with only a couple of clicks.

To set up your services, just go to iPhoto’s Preferences and click on Accounts:

2. Add bookmarklets to mobile Safari for social sharing

Soon you’ll be able to tweet right from within Safari using the native iOS share button, but for now, tweeting links while browsing on a mobile device can be a frustrating procedure if you’re using a standard copy/paste method. Instead, you can use bookmarklets (which are basically bookmarks that perform a function) in mobile Safari to share on Twitter, or on Facebook and Tumblr, too. Check out those, and many other useful bookmarklets, complete with full instructions, over at Digital Inspiration.

3. Get all the primary apps

The iPhone is well-represented when it comes to social network apps. The Facebook app just got a small update to fix bugs and improve performance, and the Tumblr app was updated earlier this week, and now has a completely redesigned interface that’s perfect for mobile sharing. Twitter on the iPhone is a solid client, but there are many third-party options available, too, like the uniquely designed Tweetbot. There’s also a Flickr app , and of course Instagram, which is quickly becoming the default network for sharing pictures on an iPhone. You’d be surprised at how much more likely you are to use these services just by having their native apps on your device.

4. See content recommendations from Facebook in Safari

Want so see some content reading and viewing selections from your Facebook friends without ever leaving your browser? The Recommend browser extension (really a bookmarklet like those described above) by Bob Hitching will let you call up a window that shows you what people in your network on Facebook are recommending most. It can be a little hit or miss, but it does surface some interesting content.

5. Use cross-service sharing apps

You can use Dropico, a service that provides one-stop shopping for photo sharing across networks like Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Twitter and Tumblr, to cut down considerably on the time it takes to participate in multiple networks, and even apply effects prior to sharing. Likewise, Gowalla can check-in to multiple location-based networks, including Foursquare, Facebook Places and Gowalla itself, all through one app.

iOS 5 will really up the game for iPhone social sharing, and it looks like Google+ might help as well, although initial reaction appears to be split, likely because of Google’s spotty track record with social services (remember Wave?). But if you want your device to be a better tool for engaging with others, there’s no reason to wait when so many choice tools are available right now.

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Google+

Huddle is Google’s mobile group chat service, and probably stands the chance of being the most similar to what Apple’s got on offer with its upcoming iMessage. But it’s designed around a very different type of messaging. You can organize contacts into groups and automatically message across those groups with a simple tap in Huddle, but it resides within Google Plus, and isn’t integrated with your device’s text messaging app. iMessage will serve as a communication tool for impromptu conversations with one or more people, and all the functions people normally accomplish through text and MMS. Huddle looks like it will appeal more to work teams and other more formally organized groups, and will work for the kind of event planning people do with groups of friends on Facebook right now.

Instant Upload and Photo Stream actually have very little in common, and make clear the different guiding principles behind Google’s new product and Apple’s offerings. Instant Upload is for sharing with a wide audience; Photo Stream is for keeping your media organized on devices either you or your close family owns. It’s the same with FaceTime and Hangouts: One is about one-on-one communication between relatively close contacts, while the other is about casting a wider net for a totally different kind of interaction. These could butt heads down the road if FaceTime implements group chat, but even so, FaceTime will likely be used in different contexts, like for catching up with mom and grandma at the same time, where Hangouts could be used for book club meeting, for example.

Google has said there’s an iOS app in the works for Google+, and even the current HTML5, web-based, front end looks great (as it should, thanks to former Apple interface designer Andy Hertzfeld) and works really well on iOS devices, according to my colleague Mathew Ingram. It’s clear Google wants to reach out to as many as possible with Google+, and Apple should bend over backwards to make that happen, because as the name implies, this new social product does nothing but add to the social appeal of iOS and the iPhone.

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Exfm is the free iPhone client for an existing service that started life off as ExtensionFM, a Chrome extension that lets you grab and build playlists out of free MP3s posted to blogs. It also lets you both listen to those and share them on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

The iOS app doesn’t let you collect music tracks itself, but it does grab songs you mark as “noted” using the Chrome extension, letting you play them back on your iPhone via streaming over Wi-Fi and 3G.

Exfm scratches a couple of itches that Ping doesn’t: It doesn’t depend entirely on users having a strong network to function, since it gathers tracks for your consideration from music blogs, and it also actually lets you play music from your built-in iPod app and “note” those songs, which means you can share your musical tastes with your social network contacts as you listen.

One of Ping’s greatest weaknesses is that it doesn’t plug in to a user’s actual music library or let her use it easily while she’s listening to music. If I have to go to my library, find the track I’m hearing, and mark it as Liked in the desktop version of iTunes, most of the time I’m not going to bother. If, on the other hand, I can just unlock my iPhone (where I do the vast majority of my music listening, anyway) and, using a single tap, recommend a track, I’m much more likely to participate.

To be fair, Apple did introduce the ability to Like and post comments about songs in the iPod app in iOS 4.3, but it works with tracks purchased from the iTunes Store, which leaves a lot of uncovered ground for many users. Exfm works with anything in your library, and it connects you to Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm friends in addition to those who also use Exfm.

Apple partnering with Twitter to make iOS more generally social is a good idea. If Exfm’s early efforts with its iPhone app are any indication, Cupertino should think about cutting its losses with Ping and teaming up with theses guys to shore up that side of its mobile business, too.

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Basically, WITH lets you tag another Twitter user (or users), and optionally take a photo of or with said user, then post it to both the WITH network and Twitter itself. You can also like the posts of other users, and use free and premium (available through in-app purchase) filters to add Instagram-style effects to the photos you include. The more you check in with specific people, the higher they rise in your profile. If you get close enough with friends through multiple check-ins, you can receive “special benefits,” according to Path. You can also follow and unfollow people on WITH, independent of whether or not you follow them on Twitter. There’s also a with.me web-based presence for the app, although at the moment it just points you to the App Store.

WITH is more useful than Path, because it doesn’t have any arbitrary limit to the size of your network. But WITH is also far more dependent on Twitter than Path, or Instagram, which is probably closer in concept. That’s a strength because it lets you sign on quickly and easily (you do have to provide your email in addition to your Twitter credentials, so it isn’t quite one step), but it also means that in many ways, WITH feels like a cool user-created feature for Twitter, rather than an independent, standalone product. Twitter’s @ replies and hashtags started out from similar, albeit more organic, roots.

WITH seems a little rough around the edges (figuring out how to post took a little while to figure out; it’s the person icon at the bottom in case you were wondering), but it seems like a more generally appealing product than Path. Plus, now that Apple has announced system-wide integration for Twitter in iOS 5, the fact that it relies on Twitter for its existence might not be such a bad thing, though Twitter itself is racking up a nasty reputation when it comes to playing nice with outside devs. We could see more apps like WITH betting heavy on Twitter now that it has the Cupertino seal of approval, however, so we’ll have to wait and see how the social network handles more attempts to exploit its services.

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Instagram

Yes, it’s the one with the hipstery faux-vintage effects. Instagram is also the one that seems to get the most press, and it’s also where you’re most likely to run into people you already know from other social networking services. It’s also iPhone-only at the moment, which adds tons of snob appeal for the Apple faithful like me.

Possibly because the Instagram app is iPhone-only, it has some great features you won’t necessarily find in the other apps in this roundup. As mentioned, it comes with a bunch of filters that you can apply right after snapping your photo. These mimic the cheap plastic cameras you can get at Urban Outfitters, which themselves mimic old-school film photography techniques and hardware. If you’d rather not use them, you can always go naked, but Instagram does automatically crop your image to a square picture.

What I really like about Instagram is the variety of sharing options it provides. You can share to Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and Foursquare, and you can tag your posts with both a title and location. Your share settings will be remembered for next time, but you can mix and match as you please with each post. Other users can both comment on and like your photos in Instagram, which really reinforces the social aspect of the app.

I also really like the Popular section, where you can view a sampling of photos from users you don’t necessarily follow that other users are really digging. Contact discovery tools that let you find friends from your on-device contact list, Facebook or Twitter friends round out the package.

A warning: if you absolutely can’t stand grungified images created with lomo-style filters, you won’t enjoy using Instagram. Sure, you could share your own images undoctored, but virtually everyone else will be using those effects, no matter what your personal preference.

Burstn

This is a very recent addition to the field. As with Instagram, you can like and comment on pictures, and view photos that are popular even from users you don’t follow. But it isn’t a carbon copy, and that’s a good thing.

Burstn lacks the photo filters that are Instagram’s bread and butter, which makes the appeal of the app quite different. For instance, I like looking at the photos from people I don’t know in Instagram more, since they tend to be somewhat artsy shots just shared for their aesthetic merits. With Burstn, the photos tend to be much more like an actual photo album shared with friends, since they maintain their original aspect ratio and usually depict either a person or a place with a little more of a narrative edge. Of course, you can also edit your photos with an outside app first, then share them with Burstn.

Like Instagram, Burstn also lets you mine your Twitter and Facebook contacts for friends, and share to those services. Unlike Instagram, though, Burstn doesn’t provide Flickr, Tumblr and Foursquare sharing. You also can’t check-in to a location when posting, though your images are geo-tagged when taken with your iPhone’s camera.

Bottom line: Though Burstn doesn’t have quite the reach of Instagram, it’s a nice alternative if you prefer unfiltered images and don’t have extensive sharing needs. Also, the app icon is really cool.

Path

Path is about even with Instagram in terms of buzz lately. It’s the new photo sharing app that limits you to just 50 connections. Hey, if Twitter hit it big with constraint (140 characters), why not extend the concept and see if it works?

Like Burstn, Path wants you to share your photos in their original form, without filters. It doesn’t even let you upload images from your on-device library, instead providing access exclusively to the iPhone’s camera, which makes sense for the intimate feel of photos shared among close friends Path is going for.

That intimacy comes at a price. There are no popular or public images to browse with Path. You’re limited to seeing what you and your up to 50 friends have taken. Even in the “Explore” tab, where I thought I might have access to other photos, you only get to see pictures you and your friends have taken, though they are displayed on a map, which is a pretty neat feature.

True to its aim of keeping your network close, Path doesn’t offer much in the way of contact discovery tools. Basically, it searches your address book, or lets you add people by email address. I think that’s appropriate, given the intent of the app.

My biggest complaint with Path is the inability to comment on or offer feedback on other’s posted pictures. I understand that with only 50 contacts, you probably know these people enough to just speak to them, but then why bother with a social network at all? Why not just show them the picture on your smartphone the next time you see them, or post to Facebook where they can comment and view on a mobile device?

Path works best for those super-concerned with privacy, and who have an interest in building and maintaining more of a local network thanks to its map-based Explore feature.

picplz

This new kid feels a lot like Instagram and Burstn, and comes complete with Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare sharing options, although it doesn’t do Flickr or Tumblr. Unlike other apps, it provides an option to automatically follow your Facebook contacts, which is a nice time-saver.

You can like and comment on any picture, and view both images that are in your network or just “interesting” picks from across the picplz userbase. Stats junkies will love that you can also see how many views any photo has received, including your own and any posted by any other user. picplz also uses these stats to organize photos by popularity, a viewing option when you zoom in on any user profile.

picplz also mirrors Instagram in that it allows you to use filters on your photos. There’s a smaller selection of choices, but the app maintains the original aspect ratio of your photo and doesn’t add a border, so it may be a nice middle ground for people who want to spruce up their images a bit, but don’t like Instagram’s heavy-handed approach. You can also choose an image from your device’s photo library if you’d rather do that.

Of all the apps, picplz has the least appealing user interface. It seems almost like a very basic bottom menu bar overlaid on a web app in terms of how it loads and behaves. It seems much slower to respond to any command than a native iOS app should be.

However, if it’s a popularity contest you’re after, picplz fits the bill. The ability to see both likes and the number of photo views makes this the perfect app for the traffic-obsessed, and positions pretty much directly opposite Path on the photo sharing app spectrum.

Conclusion

So there you have it: four fine contenders to scratch your mobile photo-sharing needs. Each has its strong points and its downsides, but for my money, either Instagram or Burstn are best suited to the task, depending on whether you fall into the pro- or anti-filter camp. Let us know your favorite in the comments.

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This is the ultimate roundup of essential apps for your iPhone from 2009.

Best Game: Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid

The sequel to 2008′s Rolando expands on the tilt ‘n’ swipe platforming action of the original. This time round, we’re brought an entire troupe of colorful Rolando characters to protect, alongside a tropical island inhabited by new baddies and a lost Rolando tribe. The artwork is gorgeous, the gameplay is excellent and, thanks to NGMoco’s Plus+ awards system, it’s got bags of replay value too.

Runners-Up Best Game: Gangstar: West Coast Hustle, Doodle Jump

Best Social & Communications App: Tweetie 2

Having formed his own development studio after working at the Cupertino campus, Loren Brichter has established himself as one of the premier App Store developers. Brichter’s skill is feeding his experience at Apple into his apps, Twitter client Tweetie 2 is an impressive showcase of his ability to distill a feature-rich experience into an app with a clear user interface. The app also rolls in a few unexpected new features including video tweeting, profile management and improved location-based searches.

Runners-Up Best Social Communications App: Skype, foursquare

Best Use of Push Notifications: Boxcar

Despite the arrival of push notifications on iPhone earlier this year, it’s still taking many developers time to implement these handy pop-up notifiers in their apps. There’s no push for most Twitter clients, no Facebook push and not even native email push from Apple. Boxcar is the missing push notifier for your favorite apps. The app includes push for Twitter, email, Facebook, RSS and even Growl.

Runners-Up Best Use of Push Notifications: NotifyMe, Ping!

Best News App: Byline

Under the hood, the app updates with the latest news in seconds, syncing happily with Google Reader. Unlike other news readers, while Byline is updating with the latest news, you’re able to keep browsing articles without suffering from any lag. It’s certainly not the most feature-rich news reader, but Byline brings together a clean interface with a robust RSS reader.

Runners-Up Best News App: The Guardian, Newstand

Best Use of Content: NFB Films

The National Film Board of Canada have brought a vast quantity of their video content to the iPhone, all of it wrapped in an easy-to-use free app. There are over a thousand videos available to browse, soak up and send to friends: from documentaries and animations to shorts and trailers for forthcoming releases.

Runners-Up Best Use of Content: McSweeney’s, Panelfly

Best Video App: ReelDirector

Apple may be stalling on bringing iMovie to the iPhone, but that’s nothing to worry about thanks to ReelDirector. With it’s powerful features, the app enables you to edit video footage into your own shorts before sending your latest amateur epic to your friends. In particular, the selection of high quality video transitions really add to the wow effect.

Runners-Up Best Video App: UStream Live Broadcaster, iTimeLapse

Best Photography App: Photoforge

Just like ReelDirector brings video editing to the iPhone, PhotoForge does the same for your photography. First-time users will be drawn to the impressive array of filters on offer, including Blur, Tilt Shift, Simulated HDR and Lomo. Once you’ve got to grips with the filters, there’s also a selection of Photoshop-style tools, including smudge, clone and brushes in a variety of shapes.

Runners-Up Best Photography App: Flickr, QuadCamera

Best Sound App: I Am T-Pain

The year’s most over-used and perhaps abused audio-effect, the auto-tune, has landed on iPhone as Smule’s I Am T-Pain. The app essentially makes even the most cat-screechingly awful singer sound as perfectly tuned as Kanye West. Most importantly, you’ll need absolutely no musical ability to have fun with this brilliant sound toy.

Runners-Up Best Sound App: Mujik, Touch DJ

Best Productivity Tool: NotifyMe

If you’re all about organization and productivity, NotifyMe will keep up-to-date with your task list. Thanks to a sleek user interface and ultra-fast startup time, there’s very little friction between you and the app, meaning you can be entering tasks and then getting back to work in moments. When it’s time to get a task done, the app will send you a push notification, plus there’s even a snooze option (perfect for habitual procrastinators).

Runners-Up Best Productivity Tool: Quickoffice, Pastebot

Best Lifestyle App: Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals

Jamie Oliver brings cooking to the iPhone and true to his style, the entire app is friendly, fun and approachable. There are currently 55 delicious recipes in the app, each one can be whipped up in 20 minutes. To help you along the way, in addition to a range of quick kitchen tutorials recorded by Jamie himself, there’s an interactive shopping list tool and portion calculator.

Runners-Up Best Lifestyle App: Couch to 5K, I Am Safe

Best Utility: Dropbox

The Dropbox service brought off-site backup to the masses. On the desktop, it runs in the background, securing your files and even letting you share them with friends, colleagues and clients with a couple of quick clicks. Although long-awaited, the iPhone app didn’t disappoint. You can browse your Dropbox using the app, plus share files and even save specific content to your iPhone for quick access.

Runners-Up Best Utility: OpenMaps, TimeTuner

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If you are new to chatting, the three major players in the market are AIM, Yahoo and Microsoft (what market are they not part of?). While AIM remains at the top of the mountain (offering great integration for MobileMe customers), rival Yahoo is making it harder for users to stay attached to AIM’s service. For those who aren’t completely satisfied with what AIM has to offer, Yahoo! Messenger is a great alternative or supplement and is a bit more robust, with support for adding users of Microsoft’s MSN Messenger service.

Yahoo has been vocal about its dedication to the iPhone platform, and its support is appreciated and apparent. Unlike AIM, Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone also supports sending/receiving photos via your built-in camera. It also exists as a free application, and isn’t cluttered with ads like AIM’s free counterpart. Several unique features of Yahoo! Messenger are also supported, including its popular “Buzz!” feature. In true iPhone style, you activate it by simply shaking your phone.

If you are someone who enjoys chatting with users who do not use either service, Yahoo! Messenger also features the ability to send messages to mobile users over SMS, saving iPhone users from SMS charges (similar to AIM).

Having used both AIM and Yahoo! Messenger on my iPhone, I’m a bit biased towards Yahoo’s offering. With better support for seamlessly moving between mobile and desktop use (actually forcing me to sign off my desktop), this keeps me from “losing” messages in one location, unlike AIM. During testing, I kept inadvertently leaving AIM “signed on” on my iPhone and messages were being routed there, instead of showing up in iChat, on which I was logged in as well.

Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone is a free download on the App Store. Check it out and let us know what you think!

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ngmoco’s Plus+

The company who dazzled your iPhone with hits like Rolando, Rolando 2, Topple (my favorite) and others, recently introduced their service called Plus+. This service allows users to challenge your friends on the network (or via Twitter) and track awards and top scores on leaderboards.

For more information, check out Darrell’s review of the service. From what I have been able to find, the Plus+ service is not open to outside developers at this time.

OpenFeint

If you are a fan of Aurora Feint, you’ve likely heard of their social gaming service called OpenFeint. This service allows users to interact similarly to Plus+, but is based around a concept they call “social discovery.” Some unique features to OpenFeint-enabled games include chat rooms for more open social discussion, the ability to see what other OpenFeint-enabled games your friends might be playing (and buy them from within the app), and the largest user base of games supporting its service, with over 100 games based on OpenFeint.

For developers, if you’re interested in integrating OpenFeint into your next masterpiece, its SDK is free to try and is available here. The size of your user base, or if an app is paid vs. free, determines the cost per user for developers to integrate OpenFeint’s service into their applications.

Scoreloop

Another service to enter this market is Scoreloop, a company and service formed by previous Apple and NeXT employees. Scoreloop is based around the simple objectives of global high scores and player challenges. Much like the other services, it also features integration with social networks such as Facebook, and allows for custom avatars and personalized profiles for tracking records and high scores. Scoreloop’s “economy” is based around coins, which helps to provide a unified scoring system between games, allowing users to maintain their collection of coins and gain or lose more via challenging other players.

While perhaps not as fully featured as other services, like OpenFeint, Scoreloop is, however, the first to announce that it is working to release its service on other devices, such as the Android platform. With a larger target market and a cheaper cost of entry for developers, Scoreloop could easily become more popular than OpenFeint (not to mention it’s user interface is more customizable to fit your application). For developers interested in Scoreloop, check out their free SDK here. Bug Landing, by the Scoreloop developers, is also a free application that features integration with this service.

Will one rise above the rest?

As Twitter became popular, we saw a plethora of competitors enter the market, from Plurk to Jaiku to Pownce. At the moment, a similar effect is starting to happen among these social networking services. Where on the console platform, each manufacturer has produced their own service, Apple has yet to bring any sort of unified service to its users. Since we all have an Apple ID for iTunes, Apple could easily integrate a beautiful solution so you can keep one central list of your gaming friends, awards and achievements.

Will Apple continue to stand by and allow multiple social gaming network services to evolve on the iPhone platform, or will they step in to offer their own service?

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