Oh, how times have changed for Addmired team. The Y Combinator startup first debuted in 2008 with an Hot or Not-esque social network plugin, but eventually found their footing after pivoting to become a developer of freemium multiplayer mobile games like iMob and its recently released sequel.
Now they’re looking to do a bit of rebranding by renaming themselves Machine Zone, and to celebrate, they’ve also announced that they have raised a cool $8 million Series B round led by Menlo Ventures. Their board of directors is being bolstered to boot — Machine Zone’s Menlo Ventures managing director Shervin Pishevar will be joining the board, as will Anthos Capital managing director Bryan Kelly. → Read More
Last January, Y Combinator startup Addmired released the game iMob for the iPhone, tapping into the immense popularity of text-based mafia games on Facebook and other social networks and bringing them to Apple’s hot mobile platform. That game has fared quite well, peaking as the App Store’s fourth most popular game (other companies like Zynga have since released their own mob-based games). Now the Addmired team is looking to capitalize on the craze by building clones like iVampires, which swaps out the Mafia-themed gameplay for one that focuses on the creatures of the night. And today they’re launching a version that is focused on an entirely new demographic: the tween girl crowd.
Dubbed Girl Wars (iTunes Link), the game replaces the gritty guns and knives of iMob with stiletto heels and handbags. Founder Gabriel Leydon says that the gameplay is similar to Addmired’s other games, but that it has been made significantly easier (presumably to appeal to a younger audience), allowing gamers to unlock items much more quickly. → Read More
Mob Wars – a largely text based strategy game that throws users into a virtual underworld of organized crime – has become a Facebook phenomenon, with 2,680,129 monthly active users and monthly revenues rumored to exceed $1 million. The game isn’t the first of its kind (in fact, similar text-based games have been around for many years), but it is among the first to go truly mainstream.
Now Y Combinator startup Addmired is looking to capitalize on the popularity of Mob Wars and its ilk by developing a new game for the iPhone dubbed iMob Online. And while it would be easy to cast this aside as just another wannabe, the game is actually very well done, sporting a great looking interface with an intuitive menu system, as well as nifty features like GPS functionality and real-time messaging. → Read More
http://addher.com/battle.swf?profileId=110 Anyone who’s ever visited HotOrNot and clicked on pictures for hours will be a perfect user for AddHer. Users (women only at this point, look for AddHim soon, say the founders) upload a photo of themselves and create a widget that can be embedded on MySpace or another website. The widget shows the user plus another randomly selected woman and asks readers to select who they like better based on a variety of questions. If this doesn’t make sense, just see the embedded widget above and keep clicking on my face (the founders decided to allow me to join even though I’m not a woman – I didn’t pick that picture though). Readers can visit the MySpace page of the person they clicked on, and users who’ve created a widget can see their ratings and the total number of times people have seen their image. See their tour and the AddHer blog for for more details. This is the first product of Addmired, Inc., which is a Y Combinator startup. More on the Addmired CrunchBase page. CrunchBase Information Addmired, Inc. Y Combinator Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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