April 13th, 2009

Girl Wars: iMob Swaps Its Guns For High Heels

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

January 15th, 2009

iMob Hits The iPhone: Prepare To Become An Addict

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

March 14th, 2008

Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup for Spring 2008

The fledgling startups listed below will present their ideas and initial products to investors at this spring’s Y Combinator Demo Day on March 18. Of the 19 companies in this batch, 10 have already launched and only one remains in stealth mode. Most of them have been in development for only three months. Chatterous Chatterous connects various forms of communication so that people can message each other regardless of the form they use most. Currently the service ties SMS, email, IM, and web together so that messages sent using one technology will be received by others using any of the other technologies. This works by setting up a group on Chatterous’s website and putting down all the ways your friends can be contacted. You can then start sending messages to them immediately, meaning that they don’t even have to change their own behavior all that much. Chatterous launched in public beta last week. Addmired Addmired provides the AddHer and AddHim social network widgets, both of which display two user profile pictures at a time and ask users to answer certain questions about them, such as “Who’s more popular?” The founders argue that their widgets are more appealing to social network owners than other widgets, because they help drive traffic within the social networks, not siphon traffic out of them. They look to establish service level agreements with some of the smaller social networks. We covered the service in February here. Snaptalent Snaptalent is an advertising network for job listings that uses IP detection to determine whether website viewers work or study at particular companies or institutions. It then displays listings from employers who want to attract workers from organizations known for their talent, such as Facebook or Harvard. See our review of the service from this week here. RescueTime RescueTime helps individuals and businesses track how they spend their time at the computer, and consequently, find ways to become more productive. The web-based dashboard charts application and website usage over long periods of time and shows you whether you’ve been reaching your goals. So far, 278 businesses have signed up for RescueTime for a total of 26,132 seats. See our review from last May here. MightyQuiz MightyQuiz is a user generated quiz destination and widget provider that we covered recently. Users are encouraged to answer trivia questions from a wide range of categories. They can also submit their own questions → Read More

February 13th, 2008

MySpacers Will Love This AddHer Widget Thingy

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

Real-Time
Crunchbase

Energy Points — Received $3M in Series A funding from Plan B Ventures
2.13.2012
Energy Points — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Plan B Ventures — Invested in Energy Points.
2.13.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
2.1.2012
2.9.2012
LetsBuy.com — Acquired by Flipkart.
2.9.2012
Cocoafish — Acquired by Appcelerator.
2.9.2012
Energy Points — Received $3M in Series A funding from Plan B Ventures
2.13.2012
StopTheHacker — Received $1.1M in Series A funding from Runa Capital
2.13.2012
Marin Software — Received $30M in Unattributed funding
2.13.2012
FNZ — Received Unattributed funding from General Atlantic
2.13.2012
LipoFIT Analytic — Received $9.5M in Series B funding from KfW Bankengruppe and Bayern Kapital
2.13.2012
Plan B Ventures — Invested in Energy Points.
2.13.2012
Runa Capital — Invested in StopTheHacker.
2.13.2012
General Atlantic — Invested in FNZ.
2.13.2012
Bayern Kapital — Invested in LipoFIT Analytic.
2.13.2012
2.13.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Energy Points — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Aero Financial — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
StopTheHacker — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Rusnano — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Durham Graphene Science — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Fit Freeway — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
2.12.2012
Metier HR - Cloud Based HR Process Automation Suite — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
TweepsMap — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Wupbox account — Product added to CrunchBase
2.11.2012
CrunchBase