Mirror mirror on the wall, who will be the Zynga of Mobile Social?
Andreessen Horowitz, a reputable venture capital firm here in Silicon Valley, has placed their first set of bets on TinyCo, makers of Tap Resort Party and Tiny Chef.
Mirror mirror on the wall, who will be the Zynga of Mobile Social?
Andreessen Horowitz, a reputable venture capital firm here in Silicon Valley, has placed their first set of bets on TinyCo, makers of Tap Resort Party and Tiny Chef.
As reported by Inside Social Games, the valuation is reported at $100 million, which is quite frothy considering their games have only seen 5 million downloads.
This funding further validates that mobile social (meaning, social games for iOS and Android devices) is what’s hot in 2011 (poor Facebook…you are so not as Bruno would say), and that unlike Facebook, it’s not a given that Zynga will dominate.
On the contrary, though Zynga has started to make huge investments in mobile, hiring David Ko from Yahoo! to be in charge of Mobile and buying the developer behind the super-popular Words with Friends, their efforts so far have not knocked my socks off.
FarmVille was not nearly as big on the iPhone as it has been on Facebook. Brandy Shaul, who also writes for Gamezebo, has even written an excellent post for Games.com where she wonders whether the lack of updates means they are re-doing the game or closing it for iPhone altogether.
Of course, Zynga could launch CityVille on the iPhone tomorrow, it could become the biggest hit overnight, and all this talk of Zynga’s mobile demise may be for naught.
Nevertheless, the fact is that the way social games spread on the iPhone is different than that on Facebook. Virality exists, but it’s more personal and not as easy as the way Facebook used to be.
With Andreessen Horowitz placing a bet on TinyCo, Sequoia Capital funding Pocket Gems, and tons of stealth mobile social companies in the process of being funded, the field to dominate mobile social is wide open.
Game on!
More information: Techcrunch
