http://blog.jambool.com How to build Virtual Currency, Monetize it with Direct payments -- and always entertain users with a great Experience. Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:46:47 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en     Playfish’s recent acquisition by Electronic Arts is great news for the company itself (it was purchased for up to $400 million in cash, stock and earnouts), but also for the social gaming industry as a whole. Playfish is the most respected social games company -- every ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/11/09/playfish-sells-a-great-user-experience/ Once upon a time, this country ran on an agrarian economy – people grew, raised and mined things, then sold them. That gave way to an industrial economy, in which manufactured goods dominated. Over the last half-century we’ve had a service-based economy, hinging on the personalization of products. Now, ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/11/04/virtual-goods-power-an-online-experience-economy/ Hot off the press, here is the presentation I gave at the Virtual Goods Summit today. Have you signed up for Social Gold in-game payments yet? Now you can let your users pay within your flash game -- keeping them engaged! Social Gold: How to Launch your own CurrencyView more documents from ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/10/29/how-to-launch-your-virtual-currency-talk-at-virtual-goods-summit-by-vikas-gupta/ John is playing Barn Buddy on Facebook, but doesn’t have enough currency to buy the guard dog he so desperately wants. To purchase more virtual coins he has to leave the Flash application for an HTML form or Javascript pop-up, and, while away from the game, gets distracted and doesn’t ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/10/28/social-gold-launches-first-ever-secure-in-flash-payments/ Social Gold will be at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco this week. Those who attended last year -- or those who attended last June's Social Gaming Summit by the same organizers -- know that this is one of the more exciting conferences catering to the virtual goods ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/10/24/discount-code-for-virtual-goods-summit/ We are excited to announce a new, self-serve feature that allows developers to create a customized look and feel for their in-game payments experience. Think of it as a way of creating customized skins on the fly that match and blend with the colors of your game. This, in ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/10/23/skinnable-ui-extend-your-brand-and-user-engagement/ We didn't intend to take such a long break, but you know how it is sometimes when you get great feedback from your user community and get busy working on those suggestions. That is what happened to us. We listened to you and got a bunch of really, really ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/10/23/watch-out-for-some-new-things/ There are moments at every startup when the vista suddenly expands before you. Today is one of those for Jambool. We’re announcing a $5 million financing round that will accelerate growth of our virtual currency platform, Social Gold. The timing couldn’t be better, as the virtual goods space has ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/08/18/new-horizons-for-social-gold/ The Valley is small, and the Web 2.0 community can feel even smaller.  Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are people in the Bay Area who don’t work in technology and, as a result, don’t follow emerging trends as closely as I do. Trends like virtual currency are a growing ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/07/06/baseball-hot-dogs-apple-pie-and-virtual-currency/ We presented our virtual economy analytics as a part of the Facebook garage on Analytics. Here are the slides. You can also browse them on Slideshare. In brief: Social Gold platform can help create vibrant virtual economies, in large part due to the detailed, insightful and actionable analytics. Specifically, you can get ... http://blog.jambool.com/index.php/2009/04/21/got-analytics/