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	<title>TechCrunch &#187; Mytopia</title>
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		<title>Israel Makes Strong TC50 Showing</title>
		<link>http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/10/israel-makes-strong-tc50-showing/</link>
		<comments>http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/10/israel-makes-strong-tc50-showing/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:26:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Roi Carthy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Company & Product Profiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CrunchGear]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[2Pad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alfabetic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ConTrust]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Delver]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[devunity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iamnews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joongel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mytopia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[payoneer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[personalria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[playce]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TechCrunch50]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tweegee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wix]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=22082</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<a href='http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/israel_flag.gif'><img src="http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/israel_flag.gif" alt="" title="Israel" width="200" height="100" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-22083" /></a>Israel seems to be the country with the single biggest foreign contingent at TC50 with no less than 6 of the 50 companies presenting on stage. Some more Israeli startups can be found in the demo pit, the exhibition space and just walking around the venue floor shopping for investors, customers and partners. 

Here is a round-up of the 6 Israeli companies that presented on stage:
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/israel_flag.gif"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-22083" title="Israel" src="http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/israel_flag.gif" alt="" width="200" height="100" /></a>Israel seems to have been the country with the single biggest foreign contingent at TC50 with no less than <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">6</span> 7 of the 50 companies presenting on stage. Some more Israeli startups could be found in the demo pit, the exhibition space and just walking around the venue floor shopping for investors, customers and partners.</p>
<p>Here is a round-up of the 6 Israeli companies that presented on stage:</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/images/logos/presenter_65.jpg" alt="" />Registered Investment Advisors (RIA&#8217;s) typically provide advice to individuals with assets of $500K and above on average. The alternative to individuals with less assets are mutual funds which lack in transparencies (what your money is invested in) and individual attention (you get to talk to customer service reps, not the fund manager). <a href="http://www.personalria.com">Personalria</a> wants to change all this by bringing the same high-end advice and investment transparency &#8220;rich folks&#8221; get to &#8220;ordinary folks&#8221; with much fewer assets to invest, say $10K.</p>
<p>The Personalria platform requires buy-in from both users and RIA&#8217;s. Users are required to open a brokerage trading account at Ameritrade or eTrade, for example, in order to use the Personalria service. RIA&#8217;s will need to create profiles describing their education, experience, etc.</p>
<p>The big question is whether the company can pull off the chicken-and-the-egg challenge, meaning, getting a critical mass of users and RIA&#8217;s that make it worthwhile for each group to join. The judges on the panel also noted the challenges the company will face in customer acquisition and the density of competition, both offline and online such as Cake Financial (a company that launched at last year&#8217;s TC40).</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/images/logos/presenter_74.jpg" alt="" /><a href="http://www.alfabetic.net">AlfaBetic</a> has developed a propriety language translation engine based on statistical machine translation and human QA to translate English to Spanish, French, German and Portuguese.</p>
<p>The service is initially being targeted at bloggers which can provide AlfaBetic an RSS feed that will then be translated and consequently monetized globally. Their engine will do most of the work, but human intervention is used to edit and proof every piece of content. The engine employs domain language templates such as technology, sports and finance. These are improved over time through machine learning and as a result of the human QA.</p>
<p>The company&#8217;s planned business model requires it to provide the translated content to portals and then the selling of ads against it. This will be &#8220;non-intelligent&#8221; targeting, i.e. basic demographics, sponsorship, etc.</p>
<p>Panel judges Om Malik &amp; Tim O&#8217;Riley were asked whether they would use the service and indicated they would not use a translation model. Instead they would opt for a full-blown localized operation such as <a href="http://fr.techcrunch.com">fr.techcrunch.com</a>.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/images/logos/presenter_45.jpg" alt="" />The story of <a href="http://www.tweegee.com">Tweegee</a> begins in Israel where the company is active as <a href="http://www.tipo.co.il">Tipo.co.il</a>, a kids community site with 800K monthly uniques (out of a total population of 1.2M kids aged 8-14).</p>
<p>TechCrunch50 marks the company&#8217;s launch of its American play—Tweegee.com—a social network aimed at being MySpace for kids aged 8-14. Positioned as a destination site, TweeGee is intended to offer tweens a safe environment to express themselves and interact with others in their age group.</p>
<p>The site offers email with a feature called WordUp, a patent pending application which works in a very similar manner to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_(predictive_text)">T9</a>, but attuned to the 8-14 age group with relevant blacklisted words and such. Kids can also use a calendar app, build avatars, play multiplayer games and create their Zones which are websites built on Flash and HTML.</p>
<p>One of the big challenges the company will face is an issue panel judge Ron Conway raised and that is how to get gain a share of the time kids are already spending online in places such as ClubPenguin. Curiously, the company is adamant about not widgetizing its offering.</p>
<p>Next week the company will launch a Russian version called Tvidi.ru , the result of a partnership with Russian Media company <a href="http://www.rbcinfosystems.com/">RBC</a> which paid $6M for 50% of the license. A Turkish version is in the works.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/images/logos/presenter_70.png" alt="" /><a href="http://www.mytopia.com/">MytTopia</a> wants to reduce the headaches and costs associated with developing games for mobile phones by allowing developers to write code once and have it immediately ported to all available smartphones and mobile operating systems.</p>
<p>The company&#8217;s solution—similar to that of <a href="http://www.mominis.com/">Mo&#8217;Minis</a>—is a Rich Content Authoring Environment called RUGS which utilizes a customized Eclipse-based IDE. Developers can use this environment to develop any number of mobile game applications without any platform-specific knowledge such as Symbian, PlamOS, or iPhone SDK. The application designer works independently of the programmer to design the app skin &amp; layout—the code remains the same.</p>
<p>MyTopia claims that a single cross-platform game developed on RUGS required one developer four weeks at a cost of $50K, while it would cost $1M using current development methods.</p>
<p>MyTopia is also running a game destination site called MyTopia Online which was considered a distraction by the panel of judges.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/images/logos/presenter_55.jpg" alt="" />Think of <a href="http://www.devunity.com">devunity&#8217;s</a> collaborative coding platform as Google Docs for code. The key pain point it is trying to solve is providing developers the ability to interact with fellow developers in real time, thereby creating a &#8220;healthier&#8221; development process which would theoretically reduce dev costs.</p>
<p>devunity&#8217;s fully functioning code editor currently supports Python, PHP, ASP, Javascripts, CSS, and HTML. It also sports built-in integrated APIs such as BOSS, Google Apps Engine, Digg, Flickr, Facebook, etc. The code is completely exportable, meaning, devunity does not lock you in to having them host the app.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s also no need to worry about versioning issues such as waiting for other developers to check-in code—devunity does all of this in real time. It also allows the developers to create discussions right on top of the code and gain additional visibility by way of a mini feed which is automatically created for each project.</p>
<p>The company is aiming for a two pronged business model approach. The first is a service play where developers would pay for usage based on a subscription model. The second is a white label approach where companies can form their own devunity environment. An interesting example for the latter would be to allow an outside development firm to use devunity in order to work and interact along side an in-house dev team.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/playce.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-22109" title="playce" src="http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/playce.jpg" alt="" width="108" height="75" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.playce.com">plaYce</a> believes there&#8217;s a gap between high-end and casual games, where the former is expensive and might not give you the bang for your buck you expect, and the latter being free but flat in game graphic quality.</p>
<p>plaYce is attempting to bridge this gap through a propriety graphics rendering technology that requires no-download yet still delivers high graphics quality and fast frame rate, right within the browser. While still restricted to IE—it requires a DirectX plugin—the company claims the technology will be applicable on other browsers and is optimized for low-end computers. It is also able to recreate dense scenarios streamed over slow web connections.</p>
<p>The company has no intent to develop the games itself, rather it sees itself as both platform and publisher. It intends to lure independent game developers by offering them what it calls &#8220;Game Infrastructure as a Service&#8221; which would include everything from the game infrastructure to user acquisition.</p>
<p>The major challenge for plaYce will be to find 2-3 killer games that will bring the critical mass of users necessary to attract game developers to the platform.</p>
<p>For more information on plaYce, see John Biggs&#8217; post, <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/10/tc50-playce-lets-you-play-in-real-places/">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>DemoPit Companies:</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0002/4722/24722v1-max-150x150.png" alt="" />Founded by Nir Ofir, a co-founder at BlogTV, <a href="http://www.iamnews.com">iamnews</a> is taking a crowed-sourced approach to the newsroom. Once news tasks are created, reporters from around can contribute into them. This can include pure textual content, photos and videos. The platform handles the entire process, from task creation to management of the contributions. With the newspaper business continuing to struggle, a solution such as iamnews can help them deliver quicker news more cheaply. (Iamnews was voted the <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/11/tc50-iamnews-emerges-from-the-demopit-to-win-peoples-choice/">best DemoPit company</a>, and became the last TC50 finalist to present onstage).</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0002/4197/24197v2-max-150x150.jpg" alt="" /><a href="http://www.con-trust.com">ConTrust</a> provides a real-time UGC moderation platform able to identify content threats including profanity, pornography, racism and brand abuse. It is then able to block these threats according to a set of pre-defined customized levels. The company also claims their platform protects against traditional security threats such as spam, phishing, and malware.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0001/7399/17399v1-max-150x150.png" alt="" /><a href="http://www.joongel.com">Joongel</a> considers itself a platform for the creation of web-based toolbars. These are toolbar &#8220;strips&#8221; in the header area of a web page that require neither download nor installation. Site publishers can use Joongel to offer a search engine aggregator or a vertical search engine for <a href="http://travel.joongel.com/">travel</a>, video, cooking, etc. The motivation for publishers is mainly through monetization via affiliation and ad rev-share.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> A prominent angel investor walking the TC50 DemoPit has expressed interest in investing in the company.</p>
<p><strong>Exhibitor Companies:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2pad_smaller.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-22088" title="2Pad" src="http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2pad_smaller.jpg" alt="" width="75" height="75" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.2pad.com">2Pad</a> is a web service that integrates with your email service—currently limited to Windows Live, AOL, Gmail, MobileME and IMAP service providers—in order to mine it for pictures and videos. 2Pad then automatically tags them with the email&#8217;s subject, sender, recipient—all of which are then available as filters. The service is very similar to <a href="http://www.xoopit.com/">xoopit</a> with the major difference being that 2Pad does not require an installation.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0002/1844/21844v1-max-150x150.jpg" alt="" /><a href="http://www.delver.com">Delver</a> has developed a <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/28/delver-comes-out-of-stealth-with-a-new-twist-on-social-search/">search engine</a> designed to uncover knowledge and information that exists in users&#8217; social graphs. Delver is packaging themselves as both a destination site and a white label solution for intra social network search.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0000/1414/1414v1-max-150x150.png" alt="" /><a href="http://www.payoneer">Payoneer</a> provides a payment solution for web-business that utilizes MasterCard debit cards to facilitate the actual payment at the end point. While similar in concept to PayPal, Payoneer sees itself more of a complement than competition in the sense that it can bring its expertise in international payments into the PayPal ecosystem—an area PayPal is generally considered as lacking.</p>
<p>The company recently closed an <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/24/payoneer-raises-8-million-series-b-from-greylock-and-carmel/">$8M Series B round</a> from Greylock and Carmel Ventures.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" src="http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0000/1423/1423v1-max-150x150.png" alt="" /><a href="http://www.wix.com">Wix</a> offers a <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/25/wix-opens-its-flash-publishing-platform-in-public-beta/">webtop publishing platform</a> for the creation of Flash-based websites, social network profiles, comments and more. (Disclosure: I advised the company in the past).
<p><strong><em>Crunch Network</em></strong>:  <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com">CrunchBase</a><em> </em>the free database of technology companies, people, and investors</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>TC50: Mytopia Wants To Help The World Play Together</title>
		<link>http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/tc50-mytopia-wants-to-help-world-play-together/</link>
		<comments>http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/tc50-mytopia-wants-to-help-world-play-together/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:07:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Greg Kumparak</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Company & Product Profiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CrunchGear]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mytopia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TechCrunch50]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[<img src="http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/mytopia-mobile-shot.jpg" />

Today at TechCrunch 50, <a href="http://www.mytopia.com/">Mytopia</a> debuted their cross-platform development framework RUGS.

The idea is simple: code once, and an application is automatically translated for compatibility on a range of mobile and Web platforms. RUGS applications are running natively on each platform, with porting solutions for Flash and every major mobile operating system. They demonstrated support for Windows Mobile, iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm OS - even the Android emulator.

Mytopia seems to be strongly focused not only on cross-platform compatibility, but cross-platform communication, demonstrating an impressive multiplayer communication aspect of the framework.  First they showed  a Facebook version of a multiplayer Poker game they'd written on the RUGS framework - then showed the same game running in perfect sync on all of the aforementioned mobile platforms.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href='http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/mytopia-mobile-shot.jpg'><img src="http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/mytopia-mobile-shot.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-22051" /></a></p>
<p>Today at <a href="http://www.techcrunch50.com/">TechCrunch50</a>, <a href="http://www.mytopia.com/">Mytopia</a> debuted its cross-platform development framework called RUGS.</p>
<p>The idea is simple: code once, and an application is automatically translated for compatibility on a range of mobile and Web platforms. RUGS applications are running natively on each platform, with porting solutions for Flash and every major mobile operating system. They demonstrated support for Windows Mobile, iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm OS &#8211; even the Android emulator.</p>
<p>Mytopia seems to be strongly focused not only on cross-platform compatibility, but cross-platform communication, demonstrating an impressive multiplayer communication aspect of the framework.  First they showed  a Facebook version of a multiplayer Poker game they&#8217;d written on the RUGS framework &#8211; then showed the same game running in perfect sync on all of the aforementioned mobile platforms.</p>
<p>After a unique Eclipse development ID is acquired, developers are able to use common programming languages (C, Actionscript 3, Java)  they already know to write their applications. The automated translation <em>does</em> require applications to be written with RUGS compliancy in mind &#8211; while applications already at the compiling stage can be made RUGS compatible, it might require a bit of manual porting legwork.</p>
<p>At least on stage, the idea seems outstanding. It&#8217;ll be interesting to see just how well the development process works once coders have gotten their hands on the tools and really started cracking away. If RUGS compliancy doesn&#8217;t create obstacles, it could be an outstanding means of getting applications into far more hands with both lower costs and shorter dev cycles. Licensing will be done per project, and Mytopia expects to offer their tools to developers at the end of the year.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/presenter.php?presenter=70#video">Watch the video of Mytopia&#8217;s presentation here.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2843450347_fb2da35604.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-22042" src="http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2843450347_fb2da35604.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></a></p>
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<p><strong><em>Crunch Network</em></strong>:  <a href="http://www.crunchboard.com">CrunchBoard</a><em> </em>because it&#8217;s time for you to find a new Job2.0</p>
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		<title>Social Gaming Network Buys Facebook Market Share</title>
		<link>http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/social-gaming-network-buys-facebook-market-share/</link>
		<comments>http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/social-gaming-network-buys-facebook-market-share/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:01:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Erick Schonfeld</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Company & Product Profiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mytopia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Gaming Network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zynga]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Consolidation is already beginning in the overcrowded Facebook application market (with 21,800 apps and counting).  One of the first sectors to see buyouts of popular apps is in the social gaming sector.  Earlier this year, Zynga bought CLZ Concepts and the Superheroes group of apps.  Today, competitor Social Gaming Network (SGN) is [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/social-gaming-network"><img class="shot2" src='http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/sgn-logo-splash.png' alt='sgn-logo-splash.png' /></a>Consolidation is already beginning in the overcrowded Facebook application market (with 21,800 apps and counting).  One of the first sectors to see buyouts of popular apps is in the social gaming sector.  Earlier this year, <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/14/game-on-zynga-and-sgn-battle-for-social-gaming-developers/">Zynga bought CLZ Concepts</a> and the Superheroes group of apps.  Today, competitor Social Gaming Network (SGN) is responding with its own roll-up of Esgut (which created Suplerlatives, Entourage, and Text Twirl), Free Gifts, Nicknames, Oregon Trail and Friend Block.  This moves SGN up the <a href="http://adonomics.com/">rankings</a> in terms of total Facebook users (48.5 million) that have installed one of its apps, which puts it right behind Slide (97.7 million) and RockYou (72.6 million) and one spot ahead of Zynga (34.7 million).  Of course, some of the biggest apps that SGN bought aren&#8217;t really games (Superlatives and Entourage), and in terms of daily active users, which is a more meaningful measure, Zynga is still ahead with 1.9 million versus 1.1 million.  </p>
<p>Still, SGN is obviously serious about scaling up its business by hiring, acquiring, or partnering with the best Facebook app developers out there.  The developers behind Free Gifts, Esgut, and Nicknames have now joined SGN as co-founders.  &#8220;We are building a brain-trust of leading app talent,&#8221; says CEO Shervin Pishevar.  He recently spun off SGN from <a href="http://webs.com/">Webs.com</a> and moved his entire team from the East Coast to Palo Alto.  And this morning it just released the sequal to its popular Warbook game on Facebook—<a href="http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=10324111388">Warbook:Rise of the Infernals</a>.  </p>
<p>The company has also launched its own cross-promotional advertising network for other gaming apps and is in the process of <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/19/sgn-starts-to-look-like-a-real-company-adds-jetman-to-its-gaming-platform-about-to-raise-10-million/">raising $10 million</a> (says an outside source).  <em>(<strong>Update</strong>: That turned out to be <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/080513/0396370.html">$15 million</a>).</em>  There are now 70 games and other apps on its Gaming Hub. </p>
<p>One of them, Free Gifts, is now part of SGN.  More than 70 million virtual gifts have been exchanged between Facebook members so far. Brands sponsor the gifts, and there is a potential for direct consumer purchase of gifts as well within a gaming context.  Pishevar is almost as excited about the prospect of virtual gifts as he is about social games:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>It is real, it is happening, it is underground. I think it has a potential to become as important or more important than the advertising revenue.</em></p></blockquote>
<p>The race between SGN and Zynga to become the biggest social gaming network is a race for talent, a race for active users, and most importantly, a race to see who can make money first.  But while they keep elbowing each other for position, they shouldn&#8217;t forget that <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/21/at-launch-mytopia-shows-social-networks-how-to-play-nicely-together/">newer entrants</a> with social-gaming platform ambitions are always trying to close in behind them.</p>
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<div class="cbw_subheader"><a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mytopia">Mytopia</a></div>
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		<title>At Launch, Mytopia Shows Social Networks How To Play Nicely Together</title>
		<link>http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/21/at-launch-mytopia-shows-social-networks-how-to-play-nicely-together/</link>
		<comments>http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/21/at-launch-mytopia-shows-social-networks-how-to-play-nicely-together/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:40:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Erick Schonfeld</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Company & Product Profiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mytopia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Gaming Network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zynga]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/21/at-launch-mytopia-shows-social-networks-how-to-play-nicely-together/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There is a new casual gaming network in town that&#8217;s got some serious cross-platform chops.  Don&#8217;t be fooled by the cutesy graphics.  Today, Mytopia is simultaneously launching across Facebook, Bebo, MySpace (currently pending approval) and its own Website with eight games (Chess, Backgammon, Sudoku, Dominoes, Bingo, Spades, Hearts, Video Poker).  On Monday, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mytopia"><img class="shot2" src='http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/logomed.png' alt='logomed.png' /></a>There is a new casual gaming network in town that&#8217;s got some serious cross-platform chops.  Don&#8217;t be fooled by the cutesy graphics.  Today, <a href="http://www.mytopia.com/">Mytopia</a> is simultaneously launching across <a href="http://apps.facebook.com/mytopia">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://apps.bebo.com/mytopia">Bebo</a>, <a href="http://profile.myspace.com/Modules/Applications/Pages/Canvas.aspx?appId=103586">MySpace</a> (currently pending approval) and its own Website with eight games (Chess, Backgammon, Sudoku, Dominoes, Bingo, Spades, Hearts, Video Poker).  On Monday, it will release the same games across the major Web and desktop widgets: iGoogle Gadgets, Apple Dashboard Widgets, Yahoo Widgets and Windows Vista Toolbar Widgets.  </p>
<p><a href='http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-bebo-small.png' title='mytopia-bebo-small.png'><img class="shot" src='http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-bebo-2.png' alt='mytopia-bebo-2.png' /></a>Here&#8217;s the thing:  the games work <em>across</em> all of these platforms.  You can be on Facebook playing cards with one friend on MySpace and another on Bebo. And you can control what people on each network see about you.  For instance, you can present your real profile to your friends on Facebook, and a different Mytopia avatar to everyone else.  These are the sort of apps that could one day break Facebook&#8217;s, or any social network&#8217;s, hold on its members.</p>
<p>Mytopia was founded by a young Israeli American, Guy Ben-Artzi, and his sister Galia Ben-Artzi.  They grew up in Silicon Valley, but now split their time between the U.S. and Israel.  Nearly all the company&#8217;s engineers are in Israel.  Guy wants to bring the computing architecture and game-play behind massively multiplayer online (MMO) games like World of Warcraft to casual games with broader appeal.  Guy explains:</p>
<p><a href='http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-fb-small.png' title='mytopia-fb-small.png'><img class="shot" src='http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-fb-2.png' alt='mytopia-fb-2.png' /></a><br />
<blockquote><em>What we have done over the past year is look at all the massive multiplayers and tried to analyze what makes those sticky and social.  What is great about all of these massive multiplayers is you have people playing in guilds and trading with each other.  We are building the MMO backend minus the 3D perspective and hard core genre. </em></p></blockquote>
<p>Mytopia games include the ability to join teams, compete in matches, send in-game messages, win points for different skill levels, collect virtual currency and trade in-game items with other players.  The company plans to explore different ways to make money including in-game sponsorships, premium subscriptions, and micro-transactions linked to game items and the in-game economy.</p>
<p>In May, the startup plans to open up its casual gaming platform to other developers.  By delivering this write-once, deploy-anywhere capability, it hopes to challenge other social gaming networks with <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/14/game-on-zynga-and-sgn-battle-for-social-gaming-developers/">platform ambitions</a> such as Zynga and SGN.  This should be fun to watch.</p>
<p><a href='http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-backgammon.png' title='mytopia-backgammon.png'><img src='http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-backgammon.png' alt='mytopia-backgammon.png' /></a><a href='http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-spades.png' title='mytopia-spades.png'><img src='http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-spades.png' alt='mytopia-spades.png' /></a><a href='http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-chess.png' title='mytopia-chess.png'><img src='http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/mytopia-chess.png' alt='mytopia-chess.png' /></a></p>
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<div class="cbw_subheader"><a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mytopia">Mytopia</a></div>
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<div class="cbw_subheader"><a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/social-gaming-network">Social Gaming Network</a></div>
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<div class="cbw_subheader"><a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/zynga">Zynga</a></div>
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