Archive for May, 2010

GamePoints.com Surpasses Half a Million Users in First Month

When we first launched GamePoints.com a few weeks ago, we felt fairly confident that gamers would like it. After all, there aren’t too many places nowadays where you can get something for free. But the response we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive, and today we are proud to announce that just 23 days after we first launched the beta version of the site, it has surpassed 500,000 unique visitors.

“The early success of GamePoints.com signifies the strong demand and clear enthusiasm social gamers have for earning virtual currency through alternative payment options, as well as their willingness to do so outside of the gaming environment,” our CEO, George Garrick, said in a statement. “There is huge spending power being acquired by GamePoints.com members, and that translates into significant liquidity and a new, sustainable customer acquisition channel for our developer partners.”

To date, GamePoints.com’s most popular methods for earning virtual currency, in order, have been watching videos, completing surveys, earning shopping rewards, taking part in ad offers, downloading music and subscribing to magazines. Other popular ways of earning free Game Points include trading in unwanted gift cards, purchasing movie tickets, recycling old electronics and more.

“Gamepoints.com represents an important new paradigm in how users can earn and redeem virtual currency,” said Sumit Gupta of BitRhymes, developers of the popular social games Tag Me, Wild Paradise and many others. “It gives our players a much larger variety of proven and unique ways to earn credit than the current in-game transactional model, as well as a seamless process for redeeming those credits for our own game currency.  This model allows more of our users to engage more deeply in our games by giving them a place where they can earn credits without interrupting their game play.”

While GamePoints.com is in beta, the site’s virtual currency can be redeemed in approximately 100 applications on Facebook, including 8 of the top 10 games as ranked by AppData. Soon users will be able to spend Game Points in hundreds of other social games, virtual worlds and MMOs across multiple platforms and the open web. Offerpal will also be integrating new alternative payment options into the site in the near future.

Video Interview on SocialTimes with Mihir Shah, Offerpal Chief Revenue Officer

Offerpal’s Chief Revenue Officer, Mihir Shah, recently sat down with SocialTimes.com’s Neil Vidyarthi at the Social Gaming Summit in San Francisco. They discuss Offerpal’s latest virtual currency innovation, GamePoints.com, as well as the company’s offering in the mobile market, and what the gaming industry might look like in the very near future.

Offerpal Named One of the “Hottest Companies in San Francisco”

Offerpal today was named one of the “Hottest Companies in San Francisco” by Lead411, a search service for sales, marketing and business development professionals.

Lead411 has granular insight into data for hundreds of Bay Area companies, and each day the Lead411 research team scours through 600+ press releases and business articles including venture capital fundings, company launches, new office openings, customer press releases, etc.  The list was narrowed down from 900 original companies based on growth in terms of revenues, funding and traffic to their web sites.

Tom Blue, CEO of Lead411, said, “We have been tracking fast companies for our customers for the past 10 years,” said Tom Blue, CEO of Lead411, “and we felt it was important to recognize these growing brands publicly… specifically in the Bay Area.”

We are proud to be in such company as organizations including Zynga, Zoosk, Outspark and Tagged. For the full list visit http://bit.ly/arnPNW.

Offerpal Launches GamePoints.com

Today we are very excited to announce the launch of GamePoints.com, a new destination site that stands to forever change the way online gamers earn, buy, manage and spend virtual currencies. In the process, of course, it will also alter the way game developers monetize their virtual currencies and acquire new users.

Most online gamers play at least four or five different games at any given time, meaning that they must maintain four or five different virtual currency accounts and waste all sorts of time earning, buying, tracking and managing multiple balances. And then, what happens when they have virtual currency left over in a game they no longer play?

GamePoints.com addresses those issues by creating a single destination that lets gamers earn or buy virtual currency and spend it in any game across the Offerpal network with just one click.

For developers, GamePoints.com represents an important new paradigm in how users can earn and redeem virtual currency. By giving gamers a much larger variety of ways to earn credit than the current in-game transactional model, as well as a seamless process for redeeming those credits, we believe this model will significantly improve user conversion, liquidity and spending power for our publishing partners. While we’re already the industry’s leading solution for in-game virtual currency monetization, through GamePoints.com we now help game developers capture revenue outside of their application or web site as well, not to mention sending them new, ready-to-spend online gamers.

Aside from all the popular alternative payment options that Offerpal is already known for, GamePoints.com includes a number of new and innovative ways to let users earn virtual currency. Collectively these alternative payment options include:

• Shopping: Earn 2 – 30% of the total purchase price when shopping at big-brand retailers such as Macy’s, Overstock, Gap, Buy.com, Snapfish, McAfee, Eastern Mountain Sports, CostPlus and hundreds more.
• Taking Part in Offers: Take advantage of coupons, discounts and other ad offers from advertisers including Netflix, Disney, Discover Card, New York Times, DirecTV and thousands more.
• Completing Surveys: Fill out online surveys from top market research firms including Nielsen, comScore, Synovate and others.
• Trading in Gift Cards: Send in unwanted gift cards using a free shipping label through Plastic Jungle and receive “Game Points” for every dollar still left on the card.
• Recycle Used Electronics: Trade in old cell phones, laptops, PDAs, camcorders and other electronics through Gazelle.
• Purchase Music or Movie Tickets: Purchase tickets to movies currently playing in theaters through Fandango or MP3 music downloads through iTunes.
• Subscribe to Magazines: Choose from popular magazine titles such as Cosmopolitan, Cook’s Illustrated, People, Men’s Health and many more.
• Direct Payments: Purchase virtual currency directly—often at discounted rates—through a number of cash payment options, including credit cards, e-wallets, pre-paid debit cards, mobile billing and more.

At launch, participating gaming applications include Zynga’s FarmVille, YoVille, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, Café World, PetVille, FishVille, Vampire Wars and others; Playdom’s Mobsters, Sorority Life, Social City, Tiki Resort and others; Digital Chocolate’s MMA Pro Fighter; HitGrab’s Mousehunt; TheBroth’s Barn Buddy; Tall Tree Game’s Fish World; K-Factor Media’s Castle Age; Tree Room’s My Town; Apps-O-Rama’s Car Madness; Offbeat Creations’ Be a Tycoon; BitRhymes’ The Warlords; Five Minutes’ Happy Farm; and many others.