Written on May 8, 2008 – 1:48 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
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The days that a Hollywood blockbuster gets the headlines when they break box office records are over. Gaming is hot, and you can be pretty sure that gaming is here to stay. Last week Grand Theft Auto IV was released and over 6 million copies were sold in the first 6 days, coining in a nice 600 million dollars!
To give you an example, the box office sale of GTA IV exceeds sales of all movies in theaters right now. It exceeds the $407 million that Pirates of the Caribean generated in the first week. It exceeds the 255.000 sold copies of Madonna her new album, Hard Candy, in the first week (not only in numbers but also in price per item sold. A CD is $20 dollars and GTA IV $90).
“Grand Theft Auto IV’s first-week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date” Strauss Zelnick (producer of GTA IV) stated.
The conclusion: Games are the new blockbusters!
Written on March 2, 2008 – 3:36 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last week we gave away 250 private beta invites for Blippr, a service that allows you to collect, organize and share your books, games, music, movies and tv shows. It’s definitely a nice service for people with a broad range of interests. Yet not everybody is interested in books AND music AND movies. For those people, there are specialized services, and an example is social network for gamers Vigster.com.
The London-based start-up showed a demo during Minibar, chaired by Mike Butcher form TechCrunch UK - and launched this week in public beta. Users can build and catalogue their games, create virtual game shelves to show off their games collection and do the regular social network thing: connecting, sharing and having heated discussions about game characters, scenarios and whatnot.
The interface is rather sober - not what you would expect from a gaming service - and focused too much on selling games. For instance, if you go to the screenshots gallery and click on one you like, you end up on a page that puts the ‘buy this game’-line right in your face. You have to scroll down to find a thumbnail version of the screenshot, that opens on a new blank page. There are officiously some missed opportunities there.
I think the way to build a strong community is to get users to love your service. Offer them the same features Vigster has now, but present them in a good-looking, game-like and usable interface. Show users that you love them as well by welcoming them in a warm way - learn from Flickr - and leave the Google Ads for later.
But most of all, let them know you love games too. I’m sure the guys from Vigster have a passion for games, but I can’t tell by looking at their service.
Written on December 20, 2007 – 11:26 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
FreeRice is an interesting initiative by the founders of Poverty.com. Both websites aim to end world hunger. My guess is that the owners of the website read the excellent ‘Made to Stick‘ and decided to present their message in a new format. And this new format sticks!
It is very simple: you are presented with one word and a list of definitions. You have to pick the right definition for each word. If you get it right, you get a harder word. If you get it wrong, you get an easier word. For every good guess FreeRice donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. They can do this because they display an ad under each list of definitions.
A brilliantly simple solution. I only hope the service will scale and advertisers will keep advertising here. I can imagine people doing this instead of Sudoku or Solitaire. This way you make the world a better place while you get smarter and enjoy yourself at the same time. In fact, they should bundle this with Windows instead of Solitaire!
The site launched in Oktober 2007 and has donated 10,238,535,870 grains of rice since then. How much will you contribute?
Written on December 20, 2007 – 3:43 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Moola has a simple but foolproof way of making millions. They give users one cent and let them play against other users in simple flash games. If you win, you double your money. If you lose, you go back to square one one cent. If you manage to win 30 times you win exactly $10,737,418.24. Not bad for winning a few flash games.
Before each Flash game you do have to watch a short video ad and that is where revenue is generated for Moola. If you want to know more about how it works read these excellent reviews on Techcrunch and ReadWriteWeb.
Local versions
The company is based in Toronto, Canada, invitation only and currently only available to residents of the United States and Canada. Once this company officially launches and becomes successful my guess is we will see a flurry of localized copies.
The reason why it makes sense to start your own local Moola is because the law is different for each country in the world. In the United States it can even be different per state. The Moola websites explains as much in their disclaimer:
Moola is currently only available to residents of the United States and Canada, excluding Louisiana, Nevada and Quebec.
The law on contests, sweepstakes and tournaments is not settled in Nevada, Louisiana and Quebec at this time. Until there is greater certainty, Moola will be unavailable to residents of these areas.
My guess is that within 12 months, just as it happened to the Million Dollar Homepage, we will see many localized versions of Moola all over the world. If you know of any similar local initiatives we would love to hear about it.
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