YouWeb and CrowdStar and have started a mobile developers fund with $10 million.
The money will be used to invest in developers of mobile social games.
Peter Relan, CEO of CrowdStar and chairman of YouWeb, said YouWeb “is an incubator that spawned CrowdStar and other hot startups of the mobile-social era, including Sibblingz, iSwifter and OpenFeint,” according to a report from VentureBeat.
Relan is naming one of his employees as someone to discover mobile game developers worthy of investment.
“We want games and more of them,” Relan told VentureBeat. “We know we don’t have all the ideas.”
The fund will invest up to $250,000 for initial funding, VentureBeat reports.
In a related matter, CrowdStar has also raised $23 million from Intel Capital and Time Warner, according to VentureBeat.
Relan added that CrowdStar is currently on a path of global expansion and wants to play a bigger role on Facebook, on mobile, and in Asia, according to VentureBeat. CrowdStar has 25 million monthly active users on Facebook.
CrowdStar started its first mobile game, Top Girl, aimed at younger females following a modeling career, according to VentureBeat. The game saw more than 1 million downloads in 10 days.
There are also other companies that have set up funds for developers, according to VentureBeat. They include: TinyCo, OpenFeint, Flurry, Scoreloop and Tapjoy.
“Mobile gaming is a very young market and there is a lot of creativity out there,” Relan told VentureBeat. “Developers have great ideas, but they may not have the game design and metrics expertise that we do as a publisher.”
In a related matter, TechZone360 reports that CrowdStar deployed the BringIt challenge and tournament platform in its category-leading games “Happy Aquarium” and “Pop Boom.”
CrowdStar is using BringIt to increase user engagement, while adding functionality and increasing user monetization, TechZone360 adds.
Ed Silverstein is a TechZone360 contributor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves