Recently in Awards Category

Here are some of the latest news and highlights in the social gaming industry that took place this week:

This week, finalists were announced for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce 2010 Ebbies award, and hi5 has been nominated for the Emerging Growth Award. The Ebbies is San Francisco's preeminent awards competition honoring excellence in business, and the Emerging Growth Award is given to a San Francisco company that has demonstrated a capacity for creativity and innovation, experienced growth and established itself as a leader in its industry. Winners will be announced at a gala awards presentation and cocktail reception attended by more than 900 business and community leaders on October 28 at the Nob Hill Masonic Center. Additionally, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce is hosting their annual CitySummit event next Tuesday, August 31 at the PG&E Auditorium. hi5's Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, Mike Trigg, will be speaking on the panel "Electronic Entertainment and Gaming-Based Communications," alongside Laura Fontana of Zynga and Holly Rockwood of Electronic Arts. The panel will be moderated by Kara Swisher of All Things Digital, and will focus on economic resurgence, job growth and "what's next" in the gaming industry. Join us for this can't miss discussion starting at 8:55am on August 31.

Google's Game Developer Advocate, Mark DeLoura, announced on Monday that he officially left Google, just 4 months after joining the company and less than a week after he announced details surrounding Google Web Chrome Store. At GDC Europe, DeLoura announced that Google would only take a 5% revenue share cut from game developers who published their games in the Chrome Store. Over the last few months, Google has made a series of strategic moves that indicate a big push towards gaming - one of those moves being the hiring of Mark DeLoura as their official gaming evangelist, who will likely be replaced soon.

Zynga got into some hot water this week over Mafia Wars with both the city of San Francisco and social game developer Digital Chocolate. Earlier this week, Zynga ran a guerilla campaign to drive interest in a promotional stunt for Mafia Wars. Dozens of fake $25,000 bills were glued to the sidewalk in five locations in Hayes Valley that encouraged passersby to visit a website where they could watch Snoop Dogg blow up an armored truck. City officials were upset with the littering effect of the guerilla marketing campaign. As a result, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent a letter to Zynga threatening a lawsuit unless they pay for the cleanup as well as provide a full proposal to resolve the issue. Additionally, Digital Chocolate sued Zynga this week for allegedly falsely claiming that they created the social game Mafia Wars. Apparently, Digital Chocolate stated that Zynga didn't claim the trademark rights for the game. The game Mafia Wars was first released by Digital Chocolate in 2004, and they believe that they had earned common-law trademark rights by establishing the name for use in business.

A report from M2 Research revealed that kids (ages 8-15) based in the US are influencing almost half of video game purchases, which is estimated to be worth $10.9 billion in software and hardware sales. Additionally, the report shows that 91% of tween boys and 93% of tween girls play games online, and that social networking is increasingly prevalent in children's lives. The NPD Group also released a report this past week, which revealed that 20% of the total US population plays online games on social networks (i.e. social media games). This equates to about 56.8 million Americans. Roughly 10% of these players have spent money for virtual goods in the social media games that they play, and another 11% of players indicated they would likely make a future purchase. NPD analyst Anita Frazier stated: "Although 35 percent of social network gamers are new to gaming, it's clear that a lot of existing gamers have been drawn into the social network gaming arena as well. This impacts both the time they spend with other types of gaming, as well as the amount of money they're spending on gaming. As more players are drawn into these games, the entire games industry is going to feel, and have to adjust to, the impact."

Just a reminder on Tuesday, September 14, hi5 President and CTO Alex St. John will be speaking at the upcoming APPNATION Conference in San Francisco. He'll join the panel "Gamer Nation in the Age of Applications," alongside Mark Skaggs, VP Product Development at Zynga, and Gurbaksh Chahal, Chairman & CEO at gWallet. Wall Street Journal technology reporter Yukari Kane will be moderating the panel. If you're interested in meeting with our team during the conference, please contact us to request a meeting: http://developer.hi5.com/php/contact.php

hi5's President & CTO, Alex St. John, will be speaking at AlwaysOn's OnMedia NYC 2010 conference on February 2.  The two-and-a-half-day event, hosted at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City, brings together hundreds of top executives from the Internet, advertising and entertainment industries.

Alex will join a panel discussion on the topic "Are Virtual Goods and Gaming the Holy Grail of Brand Integration?" moderated by Atul Bagga, a vice president at ThinkEquity and one of the leading analysts on the rapidly emerging virtual goods and social gaming marketplace.  Alex's co-panelists will include:

• Nir Eyal, CEO, AdNectar
• Kevin Xu, COO, IGG
• Mitch Davis, CEO, Live Gamer

The panel will kick off at 5:30 PM on Tuesday, February 2 in Ballroom 1.  For a full agenda of the conference and registration, please visit the OnMedia NYC 2010 site.

hi5 was honored along with Twitter as an AlwaysOn AO Global 250 Category Winner in the Consumer & Community category last year.

hi5 received another recognition this week for our innovation and leadership in the social entertainment category.  Entrepreneur Magazine named hi5 as one of their Top 100 Brilliant Companies for 2009.

This recognition isn't just among technology companies - it's all categories, from video games to health care.  hi5 was included in the "Millenials" category as one of the "companies that have mastered the ethos of an emerging generation."  hi5's huge global audience and our strategic expansion into gaming and social entertainment were factors in our selection.  Their write up of hi5:

"The No. 1 social networking site in 30 countries, Hi5 is Facebook for the rest of the world.  The San Francisco company aims to gain even more market share with a new gaming element on its site in February."

Entrepreneur reaches a total audience of over 3 million readers.  The article will hit newsstands in the June issue and is available online here.

This week, Webware, a CNET site, announced the winners of its 2009 Webware 100 awards.  hi5 received an award in the Social & Publishing category.  More than 630,000 votes were cast to select the winners. The 2009 Webware 100 Awards recognize the best Web 2.0 sites, services and applications that are leading the next wave of innovation. Webware editors received and reviewed thousands of entries.

hi5 issued a press release on the news.  Here's the article profiling hi5 on CNET's site, and a full list of the winners can be found at www.webware.com/100.

Each year, Webware.com hosts the Webware 100 awards to recognize "the best Web 2.0 sites, services and applications that are leading the next wave of innovation." Thousands of nominees are mulled over by the Webware editors (led by veteran tech journalist and CNET Editor-At-Large, Rafe Needleman), who then put the finalists up for public vote.

That's where you come in. This year, hi5 is a Webware 100 finalist. We're up against 29 other contenders in the Social category, and the polls are now open through March 31. You can cast your vote here.

Thanks in advance for those votes cast our way!

For the second year running, media firm AlwaysOn is recognizing the top 100 emerging companies that are demonstrating 'game-changing' innovations in marketing, branding, advertising and public relations. Known as the OnMedia Top 100, this year hi5 is among the honorees within the "Community Platforms" category.  

To make the cut, hundreds of private companies were nominated and judged based on AlwaysOn’s five primary evaluation criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value creation, and media attention. Among those who weighed in to determine the honor roll: KPMG, Bridge Bank, Merrill Corporation, Manatt, Phelps & Philips, and the AlwaysOn editors.

In a congratulatory message to hi5, AlwaysOn founder and CEO, Tony Perkins said, "The nominations were extremely competitive and...the level of excellence in the top 100 was remarkable. These companies are proving to have significant innovation, substantial customer adoption, large market potential, noticeable buzz, and are well on their way to creating tremendous value for their investors."

We appreciate the kudos Tony, and are pleased to be included in this distinctive group.