Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social hits 4.6 million daily players a week after launch

Electronic Arts’ latest Facebook game, The Sims Social, has picked up more than 4.6 million daily active users after launching a week ago, according to AppData.

The Sims Social was the fastest growing social game this week, picking up 2.6 million daily active users as of the beginning of the week and 1.2 million daily active users today alone. That’s compared to Zynga’s smash hit Empires & Allies, which lost around 328,000 daily active users today. Frontierville, another Zynga game that recently released a new sub-game called Pioneer Ville, lost around 220,000 daily active users today, according to AppData.

Electronic Arts’ newest social game looks like it will give Zynga — which hasn’t really faced any stiff competition in Facebook games —?a run for its money. That’s because the game has a massive franchise and name behind it, along with a development team that has a pretty stellar track record. EA has sold more than 140 million copies of the The Sims and its sequels and expansion packs and has generated around $3 billion in revenue from it.

The Sims Social is basically a lightweight version of The Sims built into a browser on Facebook. The team behind The Sims and casual games maker Playfish both worked on the game. Electronic Arts bought Playfish in 2009 when it was vying with social games maker Zynga for the top social gaming spot.?Zynga has since lurched ahead and claimed the top spot, with 264 million monthly active.

Before The Sims Social launched, Electronic Arts had around 29 million monthly active users,?according to AppData. The company has since risen to around 34.6 million monthly active users, passing social gaming company Wooga (which has around 34 million monthly active users).

The Sims was a smash hit with casual gamers because it was a very light game that was easy to get into and offered a lot of depth. You basically control a “sim” as it lives its life and try to achieve lifetime goals — which lets gamers accomplish whatever they want to do in the game. ?The games are known for having tongue-in-cheek humor and sharp writing.

Electronic Arts has not-so-quietly established a fierce casual and social gaming team. The company bought Playfish back in 2009 and also bought casual games maker PopCap?for $750 million. Both teams have made successful games, and once the PopCap deal closes,?there’s a good chance Playfish will be working with casual games maker PopCap.

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Tags: CityVille, Farmville, social games, The Sims, The Sims Social

Companies: Electronic Arts

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Google Plus struggles to add women after mostly-male launch

Since the launch of Google Plus almost two months ago, Google’s social media network has grown faster than any other network, reaching over 20 million users in just a month. Google’s invite-only launch positioned Google Plus as a male-centric network, and early Google Plus adopters were quick to criticize the initial gender ratios.

Groups formed?to urge women to join the social network, adding significance to the female early adopter voice and rapidly spreading the word (and invitations).?Findpeopleonplus.com?currently? has almost 14.5 million users indexed and shows a gender ratio on it’s home page of approximately 32% female; about two men to every one woman. This is a small decrease since the previous?Paul Allen report?of 33% female over a month ago; however, Google has yet to release any official statistics.

A 2010 study by the Pew Research Center, The Social Impact of Technology, lists women as the predominate sex in most social media networks. In fact, the Pew Research Center found that from 2008 to 2010 the number of women using social media increased while the amount of men decreased. The study also indicated women more frequently update statuses, comment on posts and photos, and are more apt to click Facebook’s “like” button. Women, simply put, are the backbone for most social media sites.

Google indirectly acknowledged women have something “different” to offer, at least in product design, when they posted this Girls in a Tech World video.?I believe Google has approached Google+ with an “enlightened” perspective — where ideas and information have been given weight based on the merit of the idea. In theory it’s a lovely premise to strive towards. The truth is, however, men and women not only operate differently in real life, they operate differently online as well. “Women’s behavior online … is less transactional and more relationship-driven,” according to Businessweek. The subtle point-of-view shift between men and women is likely to create different feedback between the two groups — feedback that could alter the direction of Google Plus.

Maybe Google gets this argument. It certainly stepped up month at BlogHer’s 2011 conference, demonstrating Google Plus (and it’s popular hangouts). Google gave BlogHer’s founders 3000 G+ invites for conference goers. But I can’t help but wonder it this is too little too late.

Inviting 3000 bloggers after Google Plus has over 20 million users, over a month after it’s launch, feels a bit like men were sent an invitation to the party by mail while women were sent a text message after the party had started.

(Image by Undertow851)

Clearly G+ has some incredibly talented women working on the project. And, certainly, other social networks like Facebook and Twitter, that are heavily used by women, were developed by men. Twitter has the highest ratio of women to men with 64 percent female to 36 percent male (Pew Research Study).

Joseph Smarr, a Google Plus developer, states in this interview that once G+ was used outside of Google’s doors, it was used in ways surprising to Google Plus developers. Google Plus has organically evolved with its user base, whereas Twitter and Facebook’s evolutions were never shaped by users. Facebook kept a firm hand, while Google has constantly interacted with it’s users — in hangouts and chats, by commenting in streams and asking its followers for feedback.

Google Plus’s charm revolves around the user’s ability to communicate directly with developers — something other social networks haven’t done.

The service was presented to its audience for the past two months as an exclusive club — one where the users would help to mold and shape a new social media network through feedback.?This personal attention is what people love about Google Plus. It is also why female users feel frustrated Google didn’t take the time to consider who’s opinion they asked for first.

M.M. Faulkner recently abandoned her 5+ years as a vintage clothing dealer to return to writing. Her blog?www.payattentionpeople.com?focuses on social media, technology, communication and society. You can follow her @payattentionppl or at?gplus.to/polarizedconsumer.

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Tags: gender, Social networks, women

Companies: Google

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Brightkite founders launch Forkly, a fun app for foodies

A new food-focused app called Forkly brings the discovery of delicious dishes to center stage — and it’s a beautiful stage, indeed. The app, which is currently on the iPhone but coming soon to Android, is the latest venture from Brady Becker and Martin May, formerly known as the founders of location-based service Brightkite.

Becker’s goal in creating Forkly is to give foodies a way to take pictures of good meals, describe specific items they truly love, rate dishes and share their favorite food finds on social networks. As it gathers this data, Forkly maps out a taste graph for each user and makes recommendations on what other dishes and drinks they should try; this feature is the core of what makes Forkly unique.

Also interesting is the Want button. You can use the app to “want” items at restaurants, and when you’re near one of the locations relevant to your “want” list, the app will remind you to pop in and try that dish you’ve been craving.

Here’s a brief demo showing off some of the app’s features:

Competitors in the space abound, from the already popular Foodspotting to the newly launched Spoondate. Both of these services also put a focus on identifying, recommending and trying specific dishes at great local restaurants.

“For apps like Foodspotting, the photo is the main focus,” Becker told VentureBeat. “In Forkly, the photos are optional; we’re all about capturing your tastes and making use of those opinions. By understanding your likes and dislikes, Forkly helps you discover new places and will show you what’s good once you’re there.”

The app also allows top users to become influencers for specific items and places. Forkly is building out tools for bloggers (to embed and share their food adventures), brands (to tout their best-loved products) and restaurants (to connect with repeat patrons and find new ones).

One of the startup’s initial restaurant partners is Cholon Restaurant in Denver. “We’re using the Forkly API to power their online menu, complete with official photos,” said Becker.

“For brand partners like GreatDivide Brewery,” he continued, “we set them up with official photos and descriptions of their offerings. We’re using taste and influence information to inform some early personalized promotion strategies.”

Both restaurants and food and beverage brands will soon get a Forkly-powered a set of tools “to help them understand those who draws the most influence, track it through the social graph and allow them to market where it counts the most,” Becker said, hinting that this suite of tools would be the backbone of Forkly’s revenue model.

Becker and May’s last app, though no longer widely considered a contender for the lion’s share of the location based social network market, was still a success by Silicon Valley standards. Brightkite was launched in 2007 as a Boulder-based TechStars company, and it exited in 2009 with an acquisition by Limbo. Altogether, the company took around $1.5 million before its sale. Brightkite was briefly headquartered in Burlingame, Calif., but the team has relocated back to Colorado, Colo. to work on Forkly.

The Brightkite experience informed some of what Becker and May are doing with Forkly. “During Brightkite, we did notice a plethora of food and drink photos floating by in the stream around meal times. I think noticing this had some influence on this project…

“The experience of launching a product, it’s ridiculously hard work, but we’re hooked. It feels good to launch a new app.”

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Tags: food, iphone app, mobile app, startup, Foodie

Companies: brightkite, forkly

People: brady becker

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Droid Bionic internal docs point to Sept. launch for $299

Just days after a photos of Motorola’s upcoming Droid Bionic leaked, new details have emerged that point to the anticipated device’s launch in Sept. with a $299 price tag.

Interest in Motorola Android phones is especially high this week, as Google announced plans Monday to acquire Motorola Mobility — news that has shaken up the mobile industry and made many pundits wonder what this means for the Android OS. Google says Motorola will be run as a separate business from Google and that it will continue manufacturing Android phones.

The Droid Bionic should launch on Sept. 8, according to an internal Verizon document from Droid Life. Best Buy advertising materials leaked by?Techno Buffalo?feature the Bionic and confirm the unit will have many of the specs previously announced for the phone and that a launch is imminent.

The 4G LTE-enabled Droid Bionic smartphone was originally supposed to launch on Verizon in the second quarter,?but Motorola delayed the device. A leaked spec page from Motorola says the device features a Texas Instruments 1-GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera, and a 4.3-inch display with qHD 540 x 960 resolution.

To go along with Bionic, there’s also the Motorola Droid HD on the way. According to leaked photos, the Droid HD is running the Gingerbread version of Android and features a 4.5-inch display (with Moto’s qHD 540-by-960 pixel resolution or perhaps 1280-by-720 resolution), an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera that takes 1080p video, and a front-facing camera.

Are you interested in picking up a Droid Bionic or the Droid HD?

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Tags: Droid Bionic, Droid HD, smartphones

Companies: Google, Motorola, Motorola Mobility

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Droid Bionic internal docs point to Sept. launch for $299

Just days after a photos of Motorola’s upcoming Droid Bionic leaked, new details have emerged that point to the anticipated device’s launch in Sept. with a $299 price tag.

Interest in Motorola Android phones is especially high this week, as Google announced plans Monday to acquire Motorola Mobility — news that has shaken up the mobile industry and made many pundits wonder what this means for the Android OS. Google says Motorola will be run as a separate business from Google and that it will continue manufacturing Android phones.

The Droid Bionic should launch on Sept. 8, according to an internal Verizon document from Droid Life. Best Buy advertising materials leaked by?Techno Buffalo?feature the Bionic and confirm the unit will have many of the specs previously announced for the phone and that a launch is imminent.

The 4G LTE-enabled Droid Bionic smartphone was originally supposed to launch on Verizon in the second quarter,?but Motorola delayed the device. A leaked spec page from Motorola says the device features a Texas Instruments 1-GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera, and a 4.3-inch display with qHD 540 x 960 resolution.

To go along with Bionic, there’s also the Motorola Droid HD on the way. According to leaked photos, the Droid HD is running the Gingerbread version of Android and features a 4.5-inch display (with Moto’s qHD 540-by-960 pixel resolution or perhaps 1280-by-720 resolution), an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera that takes 1080p video, and a front-facing camera.

Are you interested in picking up a Droid Bionic or the Droid HD?

Next Story: Sprint planning to acquire Clearwire from cable?companies
Previous Story: King of Code Finalist: James Khoo turns your phone into a personal security?system

Tags: Droid Bionic, Droid HD, smartphones

Companies: Google, Motorola, Motorola Mobility

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More iPhone parts 5 are fleeing on the future of the official launch

As noted @ chronic, at least a reseller was able to get their hands on another part of the iPhone 5. This time, it's a flex of the iPhone proximity 5 light sensor cable, illustrated above.
We asked Kyle Wiens of iFixit on differences. He noted that the corresponding part of the iPhone 4 (pictured above, right) contains the power button, noise, the cancellation of the light mic and proximity sensors / ambient. The new part of the iPhone 5 did not contain the mic, so it must be placed elsewhere on the iPhone 5.
Previously, we have also seen for 5 leak iPhone dock connector. Thus, while we can build an iPhone 5 and yet, the flight of the individual parts is probably a sign that we get the closest and launch more.
The most recent rumors have the launch of the iPhone in October 5.
Last updated: Kyle also noted that the noise cancellation microphone is also absent from this part on the CDMA iPhone version 4, rather was integrated into the headset jack Assembly. There are still, however, some differences in the relative orientations of the various components included on the iPhone part 5 to 4 GSM or CDMA iPhone framework.

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