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TMCNet:  myYearbook Debuts

[December 01, 2010]

myYearbook Debuts "Live" Gaming Platform; Introduces Video Chat into Social Games

NEW YORK --(Business Wire)--

Social Gaming Summit - myYearbook (www.myyearbook.com), the best place to meet new people and one of the top 30 most popular Web sites in the U.S., today unveiled "myYearbook Live" at the Social Gaming Summit in New York. Live is a revolutionary social gaming platform that provides 3rd party developers the ability to combine their synchronous, multi-player games with live video chat. The Live platform also matches myYearbook users together by preferred age, gender and location so they can play games with the people they want to meet.

"People use games to socialize and make new friends," said Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook. "We wanted to create a gaming platform that optimizes for human interaction above everything else. If you think of a real-life board game, a game of pool, or a card game, what makes the game fun is the people you are with. We wanted to bring that online. Our Live platform makes the people in the game front and center. We bring together players of similar age, gender, and location to harness the natural serendipity of playing Live games - something familiar to anyone who has ever made a friend on the basketball court, at a card table or at a pool hall.

"myYearbook has always been about meeting new people. We have 25 million people on myYearbook who are here to meet each other. Our social graph is not the people you know, but the people you want to know. This is critical to doing synchronous games right - you need lots of people online at the same time, ready to meet someone new, to ensure you always have someone interesting to play the next game with."

The Live platform kicks off with leading game developers, OMGPOP and Viximo, who will integrate their popular games with real-time video chat among multiple myYearbook users. Live will allow users to play people nearby or around the world and will offer an engaging alternative to asynchronous games which dominate the social gaming landscape today. myYearbook is also announcing a partnership with Heyzap, a third-party games provider, to tap into their portfolio of dozens of synchronous games.

"myYearbook's thriving, young audience is a great match for our suite of multi-player games," said Dan Porter, CEO of OMGPOP. "By giving myYearbook users a new way to communicate 'Live' while playing our synchronous game offerings, we're creating exciting and distinctive gaming experiences."

"Viximo's mission is to make our games on myYearbook compelling by fully integrating with the strengths of the platform," said Dale Strang, CEO, Viximo. "Utilizing the video chat featur powered by the myYearbook Live platform in Viximo's poker application brings new meaning to the phrase 'Poker Face,' by adding another layer of interaction to the game. We look forward to bringing a catalogue of top tier games to myYearbook."

According to a recent survey by the Information Solutions Group, over 75 percent of people like to play games with people of a similar age. The same study also found that the #2 and #3 most popular groups of people to play social games with are not people they know in "real life," but instead "online friends" and "online strangers." myYearbook has also developed a sophisticated monitoring infrastructure to evaluate millions of video-chat screen captures per day to proactively block abusive users and has partnered with ThreatMetrix to keep abusive users off the site.

myYearbook unlocks significant monetization opportunities with Live, such as integrated video advertising, virtual goods sales, and the VIP Club, a monthly paid service which offers users premier status and features.

"Game developers on Facebook (News - Alert) typically need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to get noticed among the thousands of competing applications," said Scott Levine, SVP of Business Development for myYearbook. "On myYearbook, our game partners are a select few of the carefully chosen publishers and receive significant free promotion across the site, as well as close integration with our viral marketing channels and our real-time notifications."

myYearbook will expand "Live" games with additional third-party developers over the coming months to offer a wide selection of featured game entertainment. People will be able to play on myYearbook Live in early 2011.

About myYearbook

myYearbook makes meeting new people fun and easy online and on your mobile phone. myYearbook combines innovative social games, virtual goods, social applications, and a robust virtual currency called "Lunch Money" to facilitate introductions and break the ice. The average myYearbook member visits the site 13 times per month and spends 10 minutes per visit, making myYearbook one of the most engaging social media destinations on the Internet. According to comScore (News - Alert), myYearbook is one of the 30 most trafficked sites in the United States as measured by Total Time Spent and by minutes per visitor per month. myYearbook started in a single high school in 2005 and has grown to over 25 million members worldwide. For more information please visit: www.myYearbook.com.

About OMGPOP

OMGPOP is a leading developer, publisher and destination for high quality, casual multiplayer online games, that are both virtual currency based and ad supported. With a large portfolio of in-house developed unique IP, over 1 Million game plays a day, millions of registered users, mostly all teens and 85% based in North America; OMGPOP has developed one of the most valuable, social, fun and sticky games destination. www.omgpop.com.

OMGPOP built its match making game mechanics, virtual currency and business intelligence platforms & web community. The company is expanding the development of its games to Facebook, other social networks and mobile. OMGPOP is located in New York City and funded by leading VC's, Spark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.

About Viximo, Inc.

Viximo is the largest platform that connects social app and game developers with numerous social networks across the web. With Viximo's platform app and game developers get access to over 60 million users across multiple social networks with a single easy implementation. Additionally, Social Networks are able to quickly set up a robust virtual currency, enable third parties to easily develop to their site, and instantly offer the highest quality social apps and games. For more information visit http://viximo.com or http://blog.viximo.com.

About Heyzap

Heyzap is a social, casual, virtual world and massively-multiplayer online games monetization and distribution platform which allows websites to embed games by way of the Heyzap Arcade, widget, API or blogging plugins. Online game developers are able to distribute their games to over 350,000 sites in the Heyzap Network and monetize their games with Heyzap's payments platform. Website publishers can use Heyzap's products to offer 30,000 games to their visitors and help improve their traffic and user monetization. For more info, visit: www.heyzap.com.


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