YetiZen's Accelerator Program Shows Off Revamped Games, Services

Several graduates of the YetiZen accelerator program demoed a range of Facebook games and game-related products last week to an audience of investors and potential buyers. These products covered everything from niche games and tournament sites to developer tools and platforms. As we explored in a company profile, each of the companies participating in the accelerator program already has a working product or game that gets a business model or strategy makeover during the course of the program. The idea is that each project is ready to scale at the point of "graduation," which is where YetiZen sets them up to court investors, partners, or buyers. Here's a rundown of the companies pitching products specifically related to the Facebook games platform: Company: Viroxoty Product: Fashionista FaceOff (Game) Viroxoty is already off to a healthy start on Facebook with a fashion game backed by fashion brand partnerships with Macy's H&M and Forever21. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, Fashionista FaceOff at one point broke 280,000 monthly active users with over 17,000 daily active users before declining to its present-day 90,000 MAU and 9,000 DAU. Co-founder Joel Goodrich said during the demo that Viroxoty enjoys an average revenue per daily active users of 5 cents -- which is on par with what Zynga makes, according to some calculations made based on the FarmVille developer's S-1 filing. Viroxoty wants to scale the game in size, take it to iOS and Android in 2012, launch two more games on Facebook (one confirmed as an interior designer sim aimed at the 30+ audience), and create a "retail gaming platform" for fashion brands. Company: BitPollen Product: Cross-platform user acquisition tool BitPollen's service tracks users on cross-platform games, identifying ones with the highest lifetime value. Developers can then isolate and target these users with rewards and incentives. According to YetiZen's spotlight blog, updated two days before the demo day event, BitPollen already has two seed funding offers on the table. Company: DreamsLair Product: Ashtaria (Game) Game developer DreamsLair is looking to cash in on the emerging mid and hardcore gamer markets on Facebook with a turn-based card strategy game called Ashtaria that's backed by behavior analysis software designed to drive virality. The game currently has 5,000 MAU and 100 DAU -- a figure the studio wants to scale with the help of seed funding to put toward both improving the game with content updates (e.g. a player versus player mode) and launching new games within the genre in the future. Company: Casualing Product: Cross-platform game competition service There are several tournament sites out on the open web that allow casual, mobile, and social game players to compete against one another for virtual currency -- but few offer real-world prizes and almost none offer Facebook Credits as a payout for winning the way Casualing does. As a global company, the developer has the ability to offer real money betting in markets where such transactions are legal and alternative betting simulation (e.g. virtual currency payouts) in the markets where it's forbidden. The service currently offers 25 games from which to spawn competition and is looking to grow that number to 40 in January and beyond with the help of seed funding.

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YetiZen's Accelerator Program Shows Off Revamped Games, Services

AJ Glasser

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AJ Glasser