Social gaming has really taken the technology industry by storm this year. Whether its Electronic Arts recent acquisition of Playfish or Zynga’s high profiled growth, its clear that social gaming is definitely becoming a big business. Now there is a new player bursting onto the social gaming scene, CrowdStar who just announced the launch of its newest installment on Facebook called Happy Pets.
The Burligame, California based CrowdStar already has approximately 30 million month active users on Facebook, mostly from its wildly succcesful Happy Aquarium game which currently has over 27 million members. The little known social gaming developer is ranked as the sixth largest developer on Facebook according to AppData. Based on initial results, CrowdStar looks like they have another hit on their hands. Happy Pets launched last Thursday (November 12th) and by today (November 17th) they already have over 1.2 million members. Not bad for 5 days live on Facebook.
In Happy Aquarium, users take care of fish. In Happy Pets, users adopt kittens and take care of them as they grow into cats. Seems like a simple concept – cornering the social pets marketplace. I am personally waiting for Happy Dogs to launch next. The company makes money via direct payments for virtual goods.
Currently, the company only has 20 employees and has received less than $100,000 in seed funding from its founder, Relan. In addition, Relan says the company is now making profits of roughly $1 million a month. Not bad at all.
I would expect to see some pretty strong investor and/or acquirer interest for CrowdStar in the near future. Possibly the next big deal in social gaming.
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