Archive for March, 2011

Tapjoy Fuels Self-Publishing for Mobile and Social Application Developers

Got a great social or mobile app that you think could be the next big hit? Need a little help getting it out there?

Tapjoy is proud to announce today our new self-publishing program to help independent developers turn their social, mobile and tablet games into popular, profitable titles. The goal of the program is to help “democratize app distribution” by giving independent developers access to the same advantages enjoyed by the largest studios.

Through the program, we’ll help fund the growth of promising early-stage and pre-launch games by leveraging our distribution and monetization platform and by investing capital and resources to support your game’s development. Selected games will receive dedicated monthly marketing credits for new user acquisition through our network of more than 200 million mobile consumers and 100 million social gamers.

“We’re in the unique position of being able to turn great but undiscovered apps into major hits by leveraging our mobile social distribution platform,” said our president and CEO, Mihir Shah. “We are proud to support the growing category of global application developers and entrepreneurs who need help getting their apps out there but want to maintain ownership and creative control of their properties.”

What makes our program different from others in the publishing business? For starters,we are the only publisher with enough real distribution to ensure that a game becomes a top hit. Others can promise funding and working capital (we can too), but what good is development money if your game can’t find enough users to play it? By providing you with access to our 300 million social and mobile users, we can deliver massive distribution.

Also, by allowing you to self publish, you maintain complete control over your users and your IP. We don’t want to claim your users as our own; we only want to empower you to succeed and then share in that success. As Dean Takahashi over at VentureBeat put it, “The goal is to create an alternative distribution model that preserves the creativity and independence of small developers but allows them access to vast markets at the same time.”

To apply for the program or learn more about it, visit www.tapjoy.com/publishing.

Or read about it on TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Inside Mobile Apps, Gamezebo, Gamasutra or others.

Tapjoy Helps Fuel the Growth of Glu’s Gun Bros App

On the same day that one of our good partners, Glu Mobile, announced that its hit game Gun Bros had surpassed 6.8 million downloads on mobile platforms, Tapjoy issued a case study detailing how we helped Gun Bros find many of those users, while also fueling the game’s revenue growth.

“Tapjoy is an ideal partner to help us both monetize and distribute our games because they truly understand what it takes to build a successful freemium business on mobile platforms,”said Michael Breslin, vice president of marketing for Glu Mobile.

Gun Bros provides players with a mix of action, story and comedy during adventures full of adrenaline and a large variety of over-the-top guns. Tapjoy enables Gun Bros players to earn the game’s virtual currency, War Bucks, for free in exchange for taking part in targeted, high-quality advertising offers or for downloading and trying other, relevant apps. War Bucks can then be redeemed to purchase in-game items such as new guns, armor and explosive power-ups.

For the complete case study on Tapjoy’s partnership with Glu Mobile, click here.

It’s Official: We’re One of San Francisco’s Hottest Companies

Each year, Lead411, a company that provides information, news and research about U.S. companies and their executives, issues its list of the “Hottest” companies in San Francisco. And we’re glad to report that this year Tapjoy is among the 60 companies named from a list that originally started with 2200.

Congratulations to all those on the list, which also includes other companies in our fast-growing space, such as Hi5 Networks, Zoosk, Zynga, Rapleaf and more.

To be considered for the list, companies must have demonstrated a 150% increase in revenues over the past 2 years with revenues over $3M or $12M+ in funding in the past 2 years.