Good news, fast growing social game developers or those that are desperately looking for an exit. It’s not just Zynga or Playdom buying game developers. Viacom has acquired Social Express.
Good news, fast growing social game developers or those that are desperately looking for an exit. It’s not just Zynga or Playdom buying game developers. Viacom has acquired Social Express.
Social Express is a 10 person stealth shop acquired founded by two ex-Zynga employees based in San Francisco.
Viacom’s plan has been to create social games for Facebook (and beyond) and decided the best way to move forward was to acquire a small company for its talent. Venturebeat has the details of the deal.
It’d be interesting to know how much Viacom paid for Social Express, what did co-founder Neil Souza do at Zynga (other co-founder is Tony Espinoza from SuperSecret), and what properties Viacom plans to bring to Facebook first (oh please let it not be Jersey Shore).
MTV has tons of mindless properties that could be perfect for social games.
Another interesting thought to ponder is in the event that Zynga flames out and never go IPO, does the employees at Social Express end up making more money through this deal with MTV than if they had stayed at Zynga?
I know, you say there is no way Zynga will falter and not go public. But stranger things have happened. Just ask Second Life (that Newsweek cover story is not looking so high and mighty now).
