Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson continue a long tradition of a couple investors utterly dominating their sectors by betting on what they know, and getting in early before others even know there is an opportunity. Read more »
Social media technologies continue to permeate marketing and enterprise collaboration, even if investors felt let down in the third quarter by their consumer-facing businesses like Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga. So B2B technology offerings in support of marketing and collaboration will soon steal all the social tech attention. This quarterly wrap-up analyzes these events, and provides a near-term outlook for trends, technologies and companies to watch in the next 18 to 24 months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apple and Google still dominate the smartphone space, but look out for Microsoft, which finally has some muscle behind its mobile strategy. Meanwhile mobile-browser developers went head-to-head with native apps, and Facebook continued to buy mobile expertise via acquisition. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
As great as shared cloud infrastructure can be, online game workloads often demand dedicated physical servers in addition to heavily virtualized, shared cloud servers. That’s where SoftLayer says it differentiates itself from other big cloud players including market leader Amazon Web Services. Read more »
Statistics suggest that a third of Draw Something‘s active users have deserted the game in just a month — bringing into question Zynga’s actions and judgment since deciding to purchase maker OMGPOP for $200 million. Read more »
Venture capitalists greeted the new year with fewer overall deals and dollars invested during the first quarter, but in the rapid-fire world of investing in web startups this data is about as relevant as a day-old newspaper. In a post-Instagram world the tides have changed. Read more »
Less than a month after being acquired Zynga, OMGPOP is on its way to being integrated into the giant game maker’s technology roadmap, says Jason Pearlman, CTO of OMGPOP. Some of the new Draw Something features released today were made using Z Cloud resources. Read more »
Past one month has been interesting, to put it mildly. Facebook snapped up Instagram for $1 billion and Zynga lookout OMGPop for $200 million However, here are three key lessons (and takeaways) between these two deals and what they say about both these companies. Read more »
Draw Something has gotten a big boost from China, an unlikely market for a game that asks people to draw English words and phrases. But the game is a top 10 hit and it looks like users are finding creative ways to play the game. Read more »
OMGPOP can thank the cloud for its acquisition by Zynga on Wednesday. The gaming startup, whose Draw Something iPhone used cloud computing and a NoSQL database to scale from zero (relatively speaking) to more than 35 million downloads in three weeks and never miss a beat. Read more »
What a strange story – a New York-based startup that began its life as a dating-gaming company, went through many incarnations has finally hit the jackpot. OMGPOP, the company behind Draw Something is being actively pursued by social gaming giant Zynga, which is considering offering $200 million Read more »
Zynga is reportely looking at picking off its newest rival in OMGPOP, maker of the new hit mobile app Draw Something. According to TechCrunch, Zynga is looking at acquiring the New York-based OMGPOP, which just hit 30 million downloads of Draw Something on Friday. Read more »
Draw Something, the No. 1 paid and free app right now on iOS and Android, is listed as a game but it’s not really a game at all. OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter, who designed the app, explains how it succeeds using cooperation, rather than competition. Read more »
