netjacobsson.com » Social Games

Joined the Juno Company’s Advisory Board

net — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:32:44 +0000

Sesame street – step a side! Here come Baby Juno! I’m very excited to announce that I have joined the Juno Company advisory board. The Juno Company is an amazing little San Francisco based company that is focused creating a fun, witty and engaging musical experiences for pre-schoolers. The Juno Company have already won several Emmy Awards and was founded by classical composer and mom, Belinda Takahashim her husband Adam Adelman.

There are several reasons why I decided to get involved in this company, first of all my kids absolutely love Juno DVDs’ and toys. Second, as a passionate music lover, I was just blown away by Belinda’s beautifully orchestrated compositions recorded by real live orchestras. Juno also have very strong social responsibility program: For every for every Juno product sold through the company’s website, the company will donate a special music education DVD to a child in need through K.I.D.S. as a part of their One-For-All-program. This is a great initiative I’d like to help grow.

I really believe in this team and think that the Juno Company is going to be the next Sesame Street. They are already already killing it retail byt totally taking over FAO Schwartz store in New York, the biggest such launch FAO Schwartz have done for decades, selling nation wide through Buy Buy Baby & Amazon and soon rolling out in Toys-r-Us.

I will be helping the Juno Company with digital and social strategy. And I’m not alone, I am joining a great company of advisors: Brooke Shields (narrated all Juno books), Andrew McCollum (Facebook co-founder), Bernard Gershon (former Disney SVP & GM) Peter Safran (The Safran Company) and Dr. Dorothy Singer (Yale). The great thing is that these are not just passive advisors but very active advisors. The way it should be.

If you are interested in partnering or working with the Juno Company bringing highly engaging musical edutainment to kids, feel free to reach out and I’ll hook you up.

Playhopper featured on CNN as One of 6 New Ventures from Facebook Veterans

net — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:15:59 +0000

PlayHopper was outed by CNN as one of 6 new ventures by Facebook veterans last week.

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The9 invests in AuroraFeint

net — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:57:03 +0000

The Chinese Gaming company The9 has invested in AuroraFeint – makers of the OpenFeint platform to bring OpenFeint to China & Android. Very exciting times for Jason & the team. I first got involved with OpenFeint as and advisor last year after I left Facebook & have been very impressed by the speed Jason Citron & his team have executed on their vision under the guiding star of Peter Relan, founder of YouWeb who incubated the company.

OpenFeint has over 2,200 live games for the iPhone, and will soon have publishers such as Astraware, Digital Chocolate, Glu Mobile, Hudson Soft and others onboard.

With both Chinese and Japanese investors onboard (the Japanese gaming giant DeNA invested in the company last year) AuroraFeint is set up for a strong future presence in Asia.

Very excited to see how the how the story unfolds.

Disclaimer: I’m a former advisor & a small shareholder in AuroraFeint.

CrowdStar & Facebook in Strategic Partnership

net — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:13:53 +0000

Congratulations to CrowdStar & Facebook for entering into a five year strategic relationship around Facebook Credits. I remember a little more than a year ago when I had just walked out of the door at Facebook and I first got involved with CrowdStar. In those days they were called HotBerry and had some of the most popular trivia apps on Facebook. I worked with CrowdStar as an advisor before I launched my own company PlayHopper and initiated the first meeting between the two. Its amazing how far they have come in such a short period of time and wish all the best to Suren, Jeff, Peter and Niren.

Disclaimer: I’m a former advisor to CrowdStar and a small share holder.

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OpenFeint X – Free-to-Play Virtual Goods based Games

net — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:40:10 +0000

Congratulations to Jason & the Aurora Feint crew on launching OpenFeint X - the coolest thing since sliced awesome! Now you can build free-to-play iPhone games just like the ones on Facebook with virtual goods, micro-transactions, millions of players and all that stuff! Aurora Feint rocks the iPhone games market once again. If you are a game developer – don’t be a looser ! Integrate OpenFeint now & get that Xbox-live experience in your iPhone game + million of users. Nuff said. Disclaimer: I’m an advisor.

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CrowdStar’s Happy Aquarium & Happy Pets

net — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:05:27 +0000

Big congratulations to the CrowdStar team on the successfully launch of Happy Pets, yet another great social game on Facebook. In just a week Happy Pets went from 0 to 890,000 Monthly active users. Amazing. Following Happy Aquarium’s tremendous success not long ago, this is just shows that it wasn’t a one off only. Keep a close eye on these guys – they are going to go far. Social gaming have just started to take off, and it is definitely not the-winner-takes-it-all market. There is plenty of room for new companies in this space. The key thing for all social games though, is to convert active users to active paying users. My advice: focus on optimizing mobile payments to a more salient place in the UI.

Disclaimer: I sit on CrowdStar’s advisory board.

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DeNA invests in AuroraFeint

net — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:58:51 +0000

I’m very excited to announce that the Japanese gaming company DeNA has made a strategic investment in AuroraFeint, makers of the social gaming platform for iphone games – OpenFeint. DeNA has taken a 20% stake in the company and is going to play an important part in AuroraFeint’s international expansion.

Aurora Feint is on a roll, or what do you say about this?

More than 200 games in the App store
More than 500 titles in development
More than 2,500 registered developers

Big congrats to Jason Citron, Daniella Casseley, Peter Relan & the rest of the AF-crew!

Disclaimer: I’m an advisor & shareholder in AuroraFeint.

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Upcoming speaking engagements

net — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:20:19 +0000

Innovation Day 2009 Berlin Oct 29

I’m going to be a Panelist at Deutsche Telekom’s Innovation Day 2009 in Berlin on Oct 29, together with Julie Meyer (Adriane Capital) Aza Raskin (Mozilla) Norbert Bolz, and Christopher Schläffer (Head of Innovation & Products, Deutsche Telekom. The panel will be moderated by Bruno Giussani, Director of TED Conferences in Europe.

Internetdagarna, Stockholm Nov 3

Giving a keynote the rise of the Social & Real-Time Web. Internetdagarna is organized by the Internet registrar .se. I will also meet with Centr.org, the Council of European Top Level Domain Registries to participate in a workshop on marketing domain names through social media.

Let me know if you want to meet in connection to any of these events.

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China bans foreign investment in Online games industry

net — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:27:06 +0000

This is very disappointing for many foreign investors eyeing the Chinese Online games industry. General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) issued a an order on Saturday prohibiting foreign investment in domestic online gaming operations through joint ventures, wholly owned enterprise. GAPP ever goes so far as to prohibit foreign firms from indirectly influencing Chinese gaming firms through agreements or technology support. This is really outrageous but not at all surprising. After all, this is China and the Online gaming market is mushrooming and is estimated to reach value of $3.5-4 billion this year so why not make sure that you’re in control & keep the revenues inside China? Thanks to Frank Yu for the hat tip.

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Digital Chocolate to use OpenFeint

net — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:41:27 +0000

Digital Chocolate, one of the most frequent publishers of iphone games is going to use OpenFeint for scoreboards and achievements. This is a huge win for OpenFeint, that already has more than 3 million active users on its platform and more than 200 games in the app store. I have covered OpenFeint several times before here . Also check out the interview Jason Citron, Peter Relan & I gave to TUAW some time ago. If you are an iphone game developer integrate OpenFeint immediately! You won’t regret it. Follow: OpenFeint on Twitter for more frequent updates. Disclaimer: I’m on their advisory board.

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