Playdom is making a lot of noise lately.  As the dominating social gaming player on MySpace – and rapidly growing on Facebook and iPhone, rumor has it that the company is raising a venture capital round to fuels its growth according to VentureBeat.  This funding round comes on the heals of Playdom’s announcement that John Pleasants, formerly the No. 2 executive at Electronic Arts, joined the company as its new CEO.

Playdom operates a number of social games, most notably as Mobsters and Sorority Life.  These games are primarily played on social networking platforms where users play amongst their friends. Playdom has an estimated 28 million monthly active users.  The company is hiring like crazy and has recently opened a San Francisco-based office/studio.  In addition, the company is expected to generate more than $50 million in revenue this year, according to Inside Social Games.  Playdom generates its revenue through virtual goods, like selling weapons on Mobsters role-playing game and clothes/accessories on Sorority Life.

While industry leader Zynga has roughly 129 million monthly active users and is rumored to be near the $200 million in annual revenue number, Playdom is clearly the up and coming player in the rather young world of social gaming.  With their rapid growth and viral games one has to ask, “Have you put a hit out on your friends yet?”.

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