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Posts Tagged ‘heyzap’

Heyzap, the Y Combinator startup that offers an easily-embedded widget containing thousands of Flash games, is launching a major new product today that introduces the company to an entirely new source of revenue. Dubbed HeyZap Payments, the platform offers developers a way to easily integrate a microtransaction system into their games, which could be a boon for both developers and Heyzap alike.

Up until now one of the problems plaguing small-time Flash game developers has been monetization. These games are often ripped from the sites from which they originated, so aside from ads that are integrated into the games, developers haven’t had many good ways to generate revenue. Heyzap Payments may help change this: regardless of where a Flash game is embedded, its developer will be compensated for any in-game purchases through the HeyZap platform. Co-Founder Immad Akhund says that the platform is extremely easy for developers to integrate, with a “drop-in” set of code (he says it shoud require about as much effort as integrating Google Analytics would).

Once integrated, users will be able to buy a currency called Heyzap coins, which can be used with any game that has implemented the system. Gamers can acquire points either through Offers (surveys, etc.), Credit Cards, Paypal, or via billing to their cell phone. Points and game saves can be tied to both Facebook Connect and Twitter accounts, allowing the platform to keep track of the goods you’ve purchased in various games.

Heyzap is offering a 50/50 revenue share for developers, and will also allow publishers to receive a cut for embedding games. It’s also offering a $50 bonus to any developers who sign up as a means to jumpstart the program.

Given the addictive nature of many Flash games out there, this is a great idea, and established casual gaming companies like Zynga have proven how lucrative in-game microtransactions can really be. However, there are still a few obstacles Heyzap will have to overcome. The platform may be easy to integrate, but developers will still have to come up with in-game items or bonuses that users would be willing to actually pay for, so the process won’t exactly be painless. That said, many games already have logical places to implement payments (like in-game stores), so this may not prove to be much of a deterrent.

If this sounds famililar, it’s probably because Mochi Media is also launching a similar product that allows developers to integrate payments into their Flash games. Akhund ackowledges that for the time being the products are pretty similar, though he says that Heyzap has a streamlined integration procedure (he says Mochi is more involved) and also points out the $50 incentive being offered to developers, which may be enough to get them to choose Heyzap over Mochi.

If you’d like to try out the payments for yourself, check out the demo game below.

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Heyzap, the Y Combinator startup that’s looking to become a “YouTube For Flash Games“, has closed a seed funding round led by Union Square Ventures, with independent investors Naval Ravikant (Hitforge) and Joshua Schachter (delicious) also participating. The exact size of the round was not disclosed, but it was “above $500k and less than $1 million”.

Rather than focus on building a portal, Heyzap offers a widget that includes a catalog of 12,000 games that site owners can quickly integrate into their sites. A major part of the company’s strategy lies in partnering with major online publishers to embed the widget, and it sounds like they’re seeing some success - Current features it in the site’s gaming section, and Cooliris is a partner as well. Heyzap generates revenue through advertising embedded in the widgets (most of which is served by Mochi Media).

At this point the company is operating with a very small team, with founders Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund remaining the sole employees. Akhund says that Heyzap plans to use the funding to expand.

For a taste of the kind of games HeyZap offers, check out the widget below.

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Users beware - if you try out a brand new service in private beta, don’t get too upset when everything goes wrong.

On Monday we wrote about iMindi, a new startup that first showed its stuff at TechCrunch50 in 2008. In the post on Monday we gave out 1,000 private beta invites, which were apparently snatched up quickly.

Then, disaster. The email iMindi sent out, which contains the dreaded phrase “we accidentally deleted all the user accounts” sort of says it all. Brave souls can start all over again here. I know there are at least a few of you out there that are quite willing to forgive and forget.

Here’s the email. Credit to iMindi CEO Adam Lindemann for standing up and taking a beating.

Dear Friends of Imindi,

Yesterday, we were featured on Techcrunch and many of you were kind enough to sign up to the service. Unfortunately, we had not prepared sufficiently for the demand on our servers and then with some human error we accidently deleted all the user accounts. Darn.

We would ask that you forgive us and sign up one more time as members of Imindi. We will set you up with a clean account which we hope you will enjoy using to collect your thoughts and share them with like-minded people.

We are extremely embarrassed by this mistake and we have purchased more capacity and instituted safer backup processes to handle the increased demand to prevent a recurrence of this incident. It’s a private beta, and it will be a while before this service is ready to be launched in public but we hope that you will be kind to Imindi as she grows.

Below is the new invitation URL:

http://imindi.com/invitations/03711dda503b02868903efbed6649d59046952d9

Thank you again,

Adam Lindemann

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After 473 days of beta testing and many, many preliminary releases, the rich multimedia mobile browser Skyfire has just hit version 1.0. Though Skyfire’s biggest features (namely, its ability to handle formats like Flash and Silverlight) have been in since its early days, there’s enough polish and primp in this release to justify branding it with a whole number.

In an effort to continue fostering the Android development community, Google has announced the second round of its Android Developer Challenge - a competition that rewards some of the platform’s best applications with large cash grants.

Google will begin accepting submissions from developers in August. In an interesting twist, Google is going to let anyone with an Android handset participate in the process, allowing them to vote using a special application available on the Android Marketplace. The voting application will randomly download applications from the pool of competitors, and users will be asked to rate them. These votes will determine the top 20 apps in 10 different categories (for a total of 200 apps), which will then move on to the next round. Users will be able to vote in the second round as well, but votes from Google judges will make up 55% of the final score.

So what are the developers competing for? Here’s how Google is breaking down the awards this time around:

Prizes will be distributed as follows; all prizes are in USD:
For each of the 10 categories:
1st prize: $100,000
2nd prize: $50,000
3rd prize: $25,000
Overall (across all categories)
1st prize: $150,000 (meaning the overall winner will receive $250,000)
2nd prize: $50,000 (meaning the 2nd prize winner will receive up to $150,000)
3rd prize: $25,000 (meaning the 3rd prize winner will receive up to $125,000)
In addition, attendees of selected developer events will be provided with devices intended for use in developing submissions for ADC 2.

All together, it sounds like Google is setting aside around $2 million for the winners. For more details, check out the official guidelines here.

Google’s last challenge kicked off in November 2007, with the final winners announced the following August.

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