Investors in the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based company include First Round Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners, as well as a handful of angel investors, including Dave Tisch of Box Group, Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg (co-founders of Invite Media), Jason Finger of Seamless and Jim Moran of Yipit.

The service does not send prepared meals to the home. Instead, it sends all of the ingredients necessary to make a recipe, including the meats, grains and sauces. The service costs $9.99 per person for each meal.

Blue Apron’s service, which is available in the eastern U.S., is targeting anyone who wants to cook more, but doesn’t have the time to shop or plan. Less than a year after launching, it is already shipping about 6,000 meals a week, said Matt Salzberg, the company’s co-founder and CEO.

“Aside from the convenience and cost-effectiveness to cook this way, it is an incredible learning experience that can teach you new foods that you haven’t cooked before,” he said.

Blue Apron is part of a crop of online food delivery services that are targeting busy professionals. A recent story in the New York Times reviewed five providers, including HelloFresh, Blue Apron, Plated, ChefDay! and FreshDirect. It said that Blue Apron scored high for having very fresh ingredients and clear recipe cards, but found that sometimes the concepts were a little too adventurous, such as pickled daikon and ground-lamb kebabs.

In a story by my colleague Lauren Goode, she found that there are some flaws with the services. For instance, not all of them are offered in all U.S. markets, and there’s sometimes no ability to alter recipes in case of food allergies.

Salzberg, who was previously a venture capitalist at Bessemer Venture Partners, said Blue Apron will be using the funding to expand nationwide over the next several months and to increase marketing. It will also be looking for ways to accomodate customers with specific dietary restrictions.

“We think our business has the opportunity to be a very large business. It’s one of the few markets that is applicable to everyone on the planet,” he said. “Everyone cooks, and everyone eats.”

In recent years, game sales have declined dramatically, with software and hardware making up only half of industry spending, according to NPD Group. The other half now goes toward downloadable content and microtransactions — in other words, digital content for consoles, smartphones and Facebook.

Because of this seismic shift in gamer behavior, many industry veterans are banking on the release of the new PlayStation, and a new Xbox coming later this year from Microsoft, to provide a jolt in traditional game sales.

On Wednesday, Sony is hosting an event in New York, where it is expected to unveil the PlayStation 4, as it has been nicknamed. Sony’s machine is expected to come in time for the holidays, along with the Xbox, although Microsoft declines to comment on its plans.

The good news is, that in the past, new hardware has always led to more software sales; as consumers bought one, they bought more of the other. But after a lackluster launch of the Wii U by Nintendo this holiday season, some wonder if a living-room-driven gaming experience has as much firepower as it once did.

“I feel like consumers are happy, and I’m not sure if there will ever be the right time to release a console again,” said Jerry Holkins, co-founder of Penny Arcade, a company that produces provides commentary on the industry through Web comics. “I think the spend is elsewhere. I don’t think they are waiting for the next generation; they are happy with where they are playing today.”

Electronic Arts’ John Riccitiello is more optimistic about the prospects of the next-generation devices. But then, as one of the industry’s biggest publishers, he has to be. During the company’s last conference call, he said that the December quarter was disappointing, but “that often happens when the consumer carries the expectation of a console transition.”

In January, Nintendo slashed its sales outlook after holiday sales of the Wii U failed to hit expectations. The poor turnout does not provide a lot of support for the theory that consumers were just holding back spending for the release of the new hardware.

The Japanese game company was hoping to rekindle consumer excitement by launching the Wii U with a controller that had a six-inch touchscreen display and acted much like Apple’s iPad. It also enabled consumers to interact with their TVs, by allowing owners to comment on programming within a closed social network. But the console was mostly trying to extend the life of the traditional videogame business, which relies on selling packaged software at $60 apiece.

Again, Riccitiello is hopeful that Nintendo’s performance is not an indication of the other two launches.

“I wouldn’t say that we see much correlation between the results that Nintendo has shown with their console debut of the Wii U, and what we see coming,” he said. “We see a pretty sharp distinction and, unfortunately, I am unable to go any further than that.”

But there’s no way to discount what has happened in the games industry since the last generation of devices launched. Social and mobile platforms have led to the rise of the 99-cent game and the free-to-play business model. Gamers have grown to enjoy playing a game without having to pay a dime. Then, if they want to, they can invest as much as they want.

If Sony or Microsoft are to be successful, adopting new business models may be the key.

There are already some signs of Sony’s willingness to change. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sony will provide a new streaming game service that will allow users to play games delivered over the Internet. The service is designed to use current PlayStation 3 titles on the new console. While cloud gaming hasn’t really taken off on other platforms, the technology does enable other pricing models, like subscriptions.

Another development since the last generation of consoles hit store shelves is how much the definition of a gamer has changed. With the massive popularity of Rovio’s Angry Birds and Zynga’s FarmVille, gamers aren’t just “hard-core” players but also housewives and touchscreen-savvy children.

To be sure, Microsoft has been aggressive in reaching out to a broader audience. Last week, it said that 38 percent of Xbox users are women, and more than 51 percent of owners are people who have kids. Overall, it said non-gaming usage has soared by 57 percent year over year.

Despite interest in other platforms, many also believe that there’s still a time and a place for the highest-fidelity experience possible. The console, with its high computing power, is often the perfect delivery mechanism for a gunshot to the face, or a perfectly depicted battle scenes — a fact that Activision proves year after year with its title Call of Duty, which defies industry trends. This year, for instance, the title under the name of Black Ops 2 crossed $1 billion in sales in just 15 days.

Anil Dharni, an SVP of Gree, has focused on publishing hard-core titles like Crime City for tablets, but still believes that consoles “serve an audience, who wants a high-fidelity experience that mobile devices can’t deliver today.” He thinks the traditional gaming market will decline, “but it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

Penny Arcade’s Holkins says he will continue buying consoles even if that makes him look old. “I liked having a console,” he said. “I enjoyed that, and I’ll still do that.”

Since then, Penny Arcade has became a launch pad for all kinds of entrepreneurial ventures.

The 15-person company operates out of an office in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, which serves as a sort of incubator for hilarity.

Krahulik and Holkins mostly come up with the wacky ideas; as the guy who holds on to the company’s pursestrings, Robert Khoo says whether it’s all possible.

So far, Penny Arcade has been successful with the launch of PAX, a well-attended game conference that now has a handful of events around the world. It also has a merchandising business, which is not as widely known, but no less substantial. The company’s latest effort includes filming a reality TV show called “Strip Search,” about finding America’s next top comic artist.

The funding for the show, in part, came out of a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised half a million dollars. Most of the money went to eliminating advertising on Penny Arcade for a year, but since they exceeded their goal, some of it was also used to support the filming.

Here was the idea: Fly in 12 artists from around the world to compete for a $15,000 prize and a chance to work at the Penny Arcade offices for a year. Much like “Top Chef” or “America’s Next Top Model,” the contestants lived with each other in a house, and were put through a series of challenges, where they must “fight, claw, write, and draw until only one artist remains.”

While they were in the throes of filming, I talked to Krahulik and Holkins about what it was like to be the show’s creators. The infographic below gives you some clue as to the craziness factor: 16 hours of filming a day, six people who cried, two speeding tickets, and 46 trips to Starbucks. (Not to mention 47 poops recorded, and 26 condoms used.)

Krahulik and Holkins act more like brothers than business partners. And while you can rest assured that they strove hard to find the best up-and-coming artist, at the end of the day, everything was done to create the most entertaining outcome possible.

“We made it all up, so it’s hard to take it seriously,” said Holkins, who is the primary writer for the Penny Arcade comics. “But the responsibility became really serious when you show up every day and realize that only one person will walk away with the money and the chance to work in the Penny Arcade office for a year.”

Krahulik, the Penny Arcade’s illustrator, said that knowing that there will be one winner and 11 losers becomes “bad for your soul” when having to choose between two very qualified contestants.

But just because they were sympathetic, that doesn’t mean the duo acted as conscientious objectors. To the contrary: They wanted to make it as juicy as possible. ”Jerry was bad cop, and I was the asshole,” said Krahulik, who prided himself on how many times he made people cry.

Holkins said they had to try hard to create drama, especially in a house filled with aspiring artists who all seemed to get along and understand one another. Krahulik said he did his best by looking an artist in the eye and thinking to himself, “what’s the meanest thing that I can say.” Oftentimes, it was something like, “your hair smells like shit.”

Holkins explained, “We made them cry for your enjoyment — you psycho!”

Despite all the efforts put into to creating an entertaining experience, they assured me that there was absolutely no fabricating of any events. “As a culture, we are so pumped full of reality TV, we fall into the archetypes very quickly,” Holkins admitted.

The show cost roughly $250,000 to film and, in addition to the Kickstarter campaign, it was subsidized heavily by sponsors and advertising. There will be 35 to 40 Web episodes in all; they’ll run from 12 to 15 minutes each. After the entire season appears on the Penny Arcade website, they’ll put out a DVD. The first episode will air later this month.

The one thing both came away from after filming ”Strip Search” is that there definitely will be a Season Two.

Here’s the infographic:

Two years later, the magazine changed its name to Better Homes and Gardens, today one of the biggest-selling titles in the U.S. and a core product of Meredith Corp., the Iowa-based TV and magazine firm still controlled by the Meredith family. It is now poised to merge with most of the glamorous Time Inc. publishing empire that Mr. Luce built into international fame.

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Lisa Sharples told employees at Allrecipes’ Seattle headquarters on Thursday that she would be leaving at the end of March to spend more time with her children. No replacement was named, but I’m hearing that a search is under way for a new leader.

A company spokesperson did not respond immediately to emails seeking comment.

It has been a year since Meredith Corp., which is best known for its old-line magazine business, acquired Allrecipes from Reader’s Digest Association for $175 million. The website is now one of Meredith Corp.’s largest online properties, and as such, may be standing out as Meredith looks to combine its company with Time Warner’s publishing assets, including Time Inc.

In 2007, Sharples joined Allrecipes from Classmates.com, where she was VP of marketing. Since joining Allrecipes, the brand has expanded internationally and today is in 23 countries and a dozen languages. Prior to Classmates.com, Sharples co-founded Garden.com, where she was chief marketing and merchandising officer.

A source familiar with the situation says Sharples will be missed, and credited her with keeping the company’s “culture fun, young and not corporate.”

The company’s opposition to the proposal is a little surprising, since the bill itself would not substantially change the way it conducts business. But eBay is arguing that it could affect the lives of some of its largest marketplace sellers.

“No small business should face new taxes,” said Brian Bieron, eBay’s senior director of global public policy. “There’s no benefit compared to the harm that would be done.”

The Marketplace Fairness Act, reintroduced to the Senate this week, will allow states to collect sales tax online, as long as they have simplified their tax laws.

Hundreds of companies support the proposal, including Amazon, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Gap, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, REI, Sears, Target and Walmart. Many brick-and-mortar retailers, in particular, are throwing their weight behind it because they believe that, for years now, Amazon has had an unfair advantage because it did not collect sales tax at the time of purchase.

The two organizations listed as being in opposition are eBay and the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, according to materials supplied by the supporters. Other organizations, however, are against the bill.

EBay says it worries about the law’s impact on small businesses in particular. If passed, retailers that have less than $1 million in out-of-state sales in the prior calendar year can apply for exemption.

But Bieron says that number is not nearly high enough and is completely arbitrary. He says that the U.S. Small Business Administration has definitions for what constitutes a small business, and that it has determined that a company that deals in “electronic shopping” is small until it reaches $30 million in revenue — or 30 times the exemption level.

EBay declined to say how many of its sellers would have to start paying taxes if the law was passed. It said that its largest customers are usually also selling on other platforms, so they don’t know how many would be above the limit. “We do know that we have a couple hundred thousand folks who are small businesses and entrepreneurs; they are more than casual sellers,” Bieron said.

The whole point of the law is for states to simplify the tax-collection process, but Bieron argues that the the proposal would still be too onerous for a company with limited resources.

“Our view has always been that a small business exemption should protect a small business,” he said.

In a letter sent to the Senate on Thursday, Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP for global public policy, applauded the bill: “I am writing to thank you for your bill, which will allow states with simplified rules to require sales tax collection by out-of-state sellers who choose to make sales to in-state buyers.”

The new technology, to be unveiled Wednesday along with the new console, will allow users to play games delivered over the Internet, these people said. The streaming service, they added, is designed to use current PlayStation 3 titles on the new console; the new device is also expected to play new games stored on optical discs.

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According to a filing in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, the entire case was dismissed with prejudice. Both companies issued identical statements on the subject: “EA and Zynga have resolved their respective claims and have reached a settlement of their litigation in the Northern District of California.”

If you don’t recall, EA filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Zynga in August, charging that Zynga’s social game The Ville was an “unmistakable copy” of EA’s The Sims Social. The complaint was seeking injunctive relief and damages.

The following month, Zynga filed a pair of motions to rebut Electronic Arts’ claims, arguing that The Ville on Facebook is not similar to EA’s The Sims Social. And, in a third filing, it countersued, alleging that EA participated in unlawful actions, including anti-competitive business practices, when it came to recruiting employees.

All of the cases have now been dismissed. The terms of the settlement are confidential, so exactly how the two companies worked out their differences is not known.

But in some respects, the issues EA had surrounding The Ville should no longer be a concern.

In October, Zynga said it was “significantly reducing” its investment in The Ville as part of a restructuring plan that is designed to return the company to profitability. The Ville was just one of more than a dozen games being phased out.

Electronic Arts Vs. Zynga

There’s no doubt about it’s strength in the U.S., but internationally, it’s not so clear how the seven-year old game console is faring, especially in comparison to Sony’s PlayStation. 

Microsoft sold 281,000 Xbox 360 units in January, up 4.1 percent from 270,000 a year ago, according to the NPD Group, which tracks sales of video-game software, hardware and accessories in the U.S. that occur at retail.

Earlier this week at D: Dive Into Media, Yusuf Mehdi, who leads Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, also provided an update based on internal data.

He said the overall Xbox installed base is now at 76 million, up from 70 million at the end of September of last year. Also, 24 million Kinects have been sold, up from 20 million last year, and there are 46 million Xbox Live accounts, up from 40 million.

Sales continue to be brisk because the company has been successful at moving beyond a hard-core gaming audience to serve members of the family who like other forms of entertainment, such as streaming video or music.

But the rivalry between the different console makers is particularly intense right now as the industry waits for the next-generation devices to launch.

The Nintendo Wii U was the first to launch this holiday season, but has had a relatively lackluster performance. Next week, Sony is planning to unveil its new home videogame console at an event in New York. But Microsoft has remained mum on its plans for any potential Xbox 720. Earlier this week, Mehdi refused to budge on the subject. “I’ll politely decline any comment,” he said.

So, the question is, will Sony’s PlayStation 4 be well received?

If global trends are any indication, it’s possible. Based on numbers culled from the three company’s earnings reports, Geekwire was able to determine that the PlayStation 3 was the best-selling home console worldwide during the holidays.

Sales of the PS2 and PS3 totaled 6.8 million units for the December quarter to beat the number of Nintendo Wii and Wii U units sold (5.3 million), and the number of units reported by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 (5.9 million).

For the full year, the two PlayStation devices together sold 15.6 million units worldwide, compared with 8 million for Nintendo and about 11 million for the Xbox 360.

In other words, Sony continues to have a very strong worldwide presence for the PlayStation, compared to the Xbox which seems to dominate in the U.S.

Overall, however, the hardware sector remains fairly weak. Most executives in the videogame industry believe a new wave of hardware is needed to spur consumer interest again, while others believe that gamers are less attached to the living room than they were before and prefer gaming wherever they are from their phone or tablet.

NPD reported that sales of hardware in January were down 17 percent year over year when taking into account that the month had five weeks instead of four.

The Marketplace Fairness Act was introduced to the Senate today, which would enable states to collect sales tax online, as long as they have simplified their tax laws.

In a letter, Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP for global public policy, said, “I am writing to thank you for your bill, which will allow states with simplified rules to require sales tax collection by out-of-state sellers who choose to make sales to in-state buyers.”

Misener never comes out and explicitly says that Amazon supports the bill, but he hints that, with close cooperation, it could be a winner: “Amazon.com has long supported a simplified nationwide approach that is evenhandedly applied and applicable to all but the smallest volume sellers.”

Collecting sales tax can be a nightmare. Not only does it depend on what state or country the customer lives in, but also on where the purchaser is — down to the city block, potentially — if he or she is buying something on the phone. Depending on the state, it could also be determined by the shipping address.

Amazon has been considered a prime example for why tax reform is needed. Since it was founded in 1994, the retailer has taken extraordinary measures to avoid collecting sales taxes nationwide, although more recently its stance on the subject has been softening. It now collects taxes in more than half a dozen states. Most recently, it agreed to start paying sales tax in Pennsylvania, Texas, California and Connecticut.

Brick-and-mortar retailers have contended for years that Amazon had an unfair advantage because it did not collect sales tax at the time of purchase. (Technically, it is the customers’ responsibility to pay the taxes, but that’s not very practical.)

The Marketplace Fairness Act is being introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and two Republicans, Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Under the law, states will have two options for simplifying their tax-collection process. Retailers that have less than $1 million $500,000 in out-of-state sales the prior calendar year can apply for exemption.

According to the Marketplace Fairness Act homepage, a long list of companies support the proposal, including Amazon, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble., Gap, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, REI, Sears, Target and Walmart. One of the organizations listed in opposition is eBay.

The company’s stock was up 25 percent this morning, or $3.36 a share, to trade at $17 — that’s 30 percent higher than its public offering debut in late 2011.

The Indianapolis-based company recorded a profit of $2.4 million, or four cents a share, on revenue of $46.2 million in the fourth quarter. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected Angie’s List to lose two cents a share on $46 million in revenue.

During the quarter, the company was able to increase total paid memberships by 66 percent, while reducing the marketing cost per paid membership by 24 percent.

In the first quarter, the company is forecasting revenue of up to $52 million, and marketing expenses in the range of $19 million to $20 million.

Pete Flint, CEO of the San Francisco-based online real estate company, told AllThingsD that traffic from mobile had increased 120 percent in the fourth quarter year over year. “Mobile is an enormous opportunity for us,” he said. “At some point in the future, we expect it to generate a majority of our revenue.”

Today, the company’s stock hit a new high, closing at $29 a share, following yesterday’s release of its fourth-quarter results.

In that quarter, the company lost $1.6 million, or six cents a share, on revenue of $20.6 million. Excluding some items, Trulia would have lost three cents. Analysts were expecting the company to lose two cents a share on revenue of $19.1 million.

Flint said the average revenue per advertiser grew in the fourth quarter because of mobile and an overall increase in prices. Trulia agents are buying ads on its apps separate from the Web because that is where they are seeing the best results — and because of that, Trulia is charging more for mobile. ”Consumers are absolutely out-and-about using the apps to browse and to connect with an agent to purchase a property,” he said.

One data point backing this up is that in 82 of the top 100 U.S. cities, he said, there are more leads being sent via mobile devices to real estate professionals than through the website.

In September, Trulia went public, pricing its shares at $17 apiece to raise roughly $85 million. Flint said in hindsight, mobile was also a big factor in the success of the offering.

“As we look back, investor concern last year was for companies to execute on mobile and to have a proven track record, and we are uniquely positioned to execute on mobile,” he said.

Trulia’s closest competitor, Zillow, reported its fourth-quarter results today, and also credited mobile for some of its growth. The Seattle-based company, which makes money from charging real-estate agents subscription fees and from advertising, said in December that more than half of its visits occurred on mobile devices, with that traffic spiking to 60 percent on weekends.

Zillow reported a profit of $500,000, or two cents a share, on revenue of $34.3 million. Analysts were expecting the company to break even on revenue of $31.5 million. The company’s stock surged in after-hours trading, jumping 7 percent, or $2.88 a share, to close at $41.85.

The market values Zillow at roughly $1.3 billion, about double Trulia’s current market cap.

Sterne Agee’s Arvind Bhatia upgraded Groupon to “buy” from “neutral” this morning, sending the company’s stock up 27 cents, or 5 percent, to $5.56 a share in afternoon trading. At one point in pre-market trading, the stock hit as much as $5.74.

While those gains are significant considering where the shares have been trading for the past few months, the stock overall is still down more than 70 percent since Groupon’s IPO in November.

Bhatia acknowledged how out of sync his upgrade is with the bigger picture: “This is an out-of-consensus upgrade predicated on a more constructive longer-term view of the company,” he wrote in a letter to investors. He also warned that the upgrade was not a reflection of the company’s fourth-quarter results, which are being released on Feb. 27. (Bhatia believes the stock can go as high as $9 over the next 12 months.)

Rather, his thesis is based on the belief that the Chicago company — and therefore its CEO and founder Andrew Mason — can execute on a number of fronts, by turning around its international business and leveraging its mobile commerce foothold. And, even more importantly, he believes that Groupon can evolve beyond its core push business of delivering offers by email to a model where consumers will discover deals on the site through search engines and direct traffic to the site.

In November, I wrote about this evolution to a marketplace approach, which Groupon was rolling out in Chicago and New York. At the time, Jeff Holden, the company’s SVP of Product, explained that Groupon had mastered serendipity by sending offers to people they thought might like them.

But now they are trying to become a destination where people shop for things they already know they are looking to buy. In a handful of markets, consumers can now browse and search a catalog of offers — they don’t disappear after one day. Categories span everything from local deals, including auto, restaurants and spas, to products, like bed linens and pet care.

At the time, Groupon said it had amassed 27,000 deals in North America as part of the company’s new direction. That will be a critical number to watch, since having a lot of inventory will be a crucial component to its success.

Bhatia claims that the benefit to this approach is that the deals can now be marketed effectively through search engines, like Google and Bing, as opposed to sending emails (which people are tiring of). “Currently less than 5 percent of Groupon’s revenue comes from search engine marketing,” he wrote. “In contrast, an estimated 25 percent of queries on search engines are local and 50 percent of mobile searches are for local, which suggests meaningful untapped opportunity.”

Rakesh Agrawal, a business consultant and outspoken critic on Groupon, disagreed with the company’s prospects of using Google and Bing to drive sales going forward. “Search marketing is a much more complicated sell,” he said. “Even if it were successful, the revenue they could generate pales in comparison with what daily deals were throwing off.”

Groupon is expecting fourth-quarter revenue ranging between $625 million and $675 million, an increase of 27 percent to 37 percent, compared with the same period a year earlier. It expects income from operations to be between breakeven and $20 million, compared with a loss of $15 million in the fourth-quarter 2011. Analysts are forecasting a loss of two cents a share.

Institutional Venture Partners led the round, with existing investors RRE Ventures, SAP Ventures and First Round Capital also participating.

To date, the New York-based company has raised $75 million in equity, and even more if you count the $100 million in debt it secured from Goldman Sachs and Fortress Credit in August.

On Deck said it will use the capital raised today to fund additional growth, which includes new product development and getting the word out to more merchants about the company.

On Deck lends between $5,000 and $150,000 in short-term loans to small businesses, ranging from auto repair shops to bridal boutiques. It vows that the loan application process can take as little as 15 minutes because it uses technology on the back end to evaluate a company beyond its credit scores.

Other lenders provide loans online, but most are targeting other online entities. For instance, some of the companies that have entered that space include Kabbage, which has raised $56 million in capital, and more recently, Amazon.com.

Since 2008, On Deck says, it has deployed $400 million to thousands of small-to-medium-sized businesses.

To do so, the Japanese-based company acquired San Francisco-based OpenFeint and established a U.S. headquarters in the same city. It then purchased Funzio, a mobile game developer, to help make hit games for the platform. In all, it spent $300 million.

But now the company is pulling back on its plans — just a bit.

While Gree is a massive entity in Japan, with $2 billion in annual revenue, its efforts in North America so far have produced much less. The company does not always break out revenue, but in August, it reported that sales in the U.S. totaled $16.9 million in the second quarter.

In the conclusion of a two-year spending spree, Gree announced in December that it was rethinking its platform ambitions and laid off about 25 members of its platform team to focus on mobile game development. I caught up with Anil Dharni, Funzio founder and Gree’s SVP of its studio operations, in San Francisco last week, to better understand where the the company is headed.

Here are some highlights from the conversation:

Why did Gree shut down OpenFeint in the U.S.? Does it no longer believe in the ability to build a network where players can discover games and other people to play with (a.k.a, a mobile platform like Facebook)?

Anil Dharni: We acquired OpenFeint two years ago, when Gree wanted to get into the U.S. It was working with a slew of indie developers, and over the past two years, we learned about the publishing business and the platform business. We’ve solidified our position with developers, so we didn’t need the platform team [in the U.S.] and moved production back to Japan.

So, what’s the status of the platform in the U.S.?

Dharni: It’s just being developed in Japan. It’s in beta [in the U.S.] today. Our learnings from the process is that we don’t want to have a me-too publishing strategy. We have to offer more, like game analytics, consulting, push notifications, game mechanics, etc. We are not ready to release those capabilities today, but we think we can bring it altogether.

The transfer of the platform development to Japan led to the elimination of 25 jobs in the U.S. How many employees do you have today?

There are 400 employees in the San Francisco offices, Dharni said, which are directly across the street from AT&T Park. The company has also opened a Canadian studio in Vancouver, where it has 10 employees. Both offices are hiring.

Crime City is one of the company’s oldest titles (launched in August 2010), and it continues to be in the Top 50 highest-grossing apps today. How does it continue to attract players?

“A lot of people talk about shorter lifespan of games on mobile than on Facebook,” Dharni said. But by working with his Japanese counterparts, they’ve been able to learn how to retain users for longer periods of time and increase the user base. It has required them to release more content and new mechanics inside of the games to keep people coming back.

How is hard-core being defined on mobile?

The more strategy-based the game is, the more hard-core it is, he said. “It means a smaller audience that monetizes better.” Genres may include first-person shooters, role-playing and card games (a popular category in Japan that challenges players to collect a deck of cards by completing a number of mini games). Dharni said that more developers have become focused on hard-core as the cost to acquire a player on mobile has gone up, since they can deliver a return on investment over a longer period of time.

As games become more hard-core, is the cost of developing a game going up?

No, it hasn’t, Dharni said, but the amount of time it takes to launch a game has gotten longer. “We used to launch games without events and other mechanics and then layer them in later. Now, they are included from the time of beta, which means testing the games out for a long time in either Canada or Australia.”

Is Android catching up to the iPhone in terms of revenue?

It is, if you aren’t successful on the iPad, Dharni said. But if you are, then Android is not competitive yet.

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

“We are building the Uber for delivery people,” Donahoe said this morning at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, following an appearance by Apple’s Tim Cook. “We think we can do it at scale. No one single retailer can do it on their own, so we are building it for the retail industry and using our technology capabilities to build it.”

His opinions differ drastically from Amazon’s last public statements on the topic. In July, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said the company was building more distribution centers to be closer to customers and to speed up delivery times, “but in terms of same-day delivery, we don’t see a way to do same-day on a broad scale at the moment.”

Donahoe said he believes that there is plenty of unused inventory in today’s delivery systems to make it work. The goal is to be able to bid out each order to the nearest driver, similar to the way Uber taps into a network of town cars looking for their next fare.

So far, eBay is experimenting on a small scale with pilot programs in San Francisco and parts of New York City. The eBay Now app allows you to look for local inventory at several stores, including Macy’s and Walgreens. After an order is placed, the products are delivered within two to four hours (right now, Donahoe said, times are averaging one to two hours).

He said the system doesn’t work for any one retailer on their own, but that it could work by providing the service to a network of companies with many locations. Still, that isn’t stopping other mega merchants, like Walmart, from also experimenting with same-day delivery. The benefit to eBay or Walmart, in general, is that they are relying on inventory located in stores near central locations, unlike Amazon, which owns massive distribution centers often based on the outskirts of town.

Is delivery something that could eventually make money? Donahoe thinks so.

“We are trying to build it, and over time, if we are building value, then the retailers will pay for those leads,” he said.

Britely will be shutting down on Feb. 18, according to the company’s blog post.

For a year or so now, the daily deals provider has been busy acquiring companies to bulk up the engineering and tech talent in its Palo Alto, Calif., offices. So far, its efforts have resulted in the launch of several services, such as an online calendar system, a loyalty program, mobile payments and point-of-sale software.

Terms of the MashLogic deal were not disclosed, but most of Groupon’s acquisitions in the space so far have not been large enough to require the public company to disclose them. Two recent purchases include Glassmap last month, and CommerceInterface in December.

In the blog post today, the Britely team writes: “Like all startups, our aspiration has always been to have a major impact on the world, and with Groupon, we see a real opportunity to make a significant improvement in people’s everyday lives.”

The acquisition was noticed first by PandoDaily.

Over the past couple of years, American Express has been actively working on ways for its members to interact with merchants online.

As a result, Amex cardholders can link their account to a number of social networks, like Foursquare, Facebook and Xbox Live, for the chance to unlock discounts.

This announcement today, however, marks the first time American Express is allowing consumers to buy things through social networks.

Leslie Berland, the SVP of digital partnerships and development at American Express, said a year ago, it started distributing offers and coupons on Twitter. In that time, she said, cardholders have saved “millions of dollars” from “thousands of merchants.”

Starting today, all cardholders will have to register to participate, even if they’ve used the service before, this time to provide a physical address for delivering products.

After that, it should be pretty painless to buy something. For instance, participants will be able to buy a $25 American Express Gift Card for $15 this afternoon by tweeting #BuyAmexGiftCard25. American Express will reply via Twitter, asking the user to confirm the purchase in a tweet. All products will be shipped via free two-day shipping.

Starting Wednesday, more items will go on sale, including an Amazon Kindle Fire HD for $150 and an Xbox 360 4GB console with three months of Xbox Live for $180. All deals will be offered for a three-week period.

While it’s easy for cardholders to participate, American Express is having to do a lot of work on the back end to make it run smoothly. There is a customer care support team to address any issues that arise, and it is working with a partner to provide the shipping logistics — neither function trivial … or cheap.

Berland acknowledges that it took “a great deal of work to think about every single use case.”

The commerce platform is coming to Twitter first, but it will also eventually come to Facebook and other platforms, Berland confirmed. Twitter is not getting a cut of the revenue from the transactions. “This is Chapter One,” she said. “We are very invested in Twitter, and we’ve taken it a step further here, but the best is yet to come. We are very confident that it will perform very well.”

To date, there have been very few examples of Twitter commerce. The most high-profile launch, perhaps, was by Chirpify, a Portland-based startup that helps merchants accept payments from a Twitter stream. Otherwise, the best implementation of selling products on a social network so far is likely by Facebook itself through its sale of gifts.

Here’s a video demonstrating how an Amex cardholder can redeem offers and buy something through Twitter:

Together, the two will be rebranded as nCrowd, and will be headquartered out of Atlanta. 

There are two remarkable aspects to this transaction, even though nCrowd will still only be a fraction of the size of Groupon or LivingSocial.

First is that the two companies represent a total of 19 acquisitions combined, representing a significant percentage of the overall number of deals that have taken place in the U.S. Second is that this deal was able to get done at all, given the current state of the industry.

Over the past year, Groupon has become a clear winner in the space, despite thousands of startups trying to challenge it. Groupon’s staying power, in part, proves that while the coupon business was easy to replicate, it isn’t easy to scale. And even at Groupon’s scale, it still struggles.

Thus, finding a buyer has become increasingly difficult for those that remain in business.

For instance, in 2011, 63 daily deal companies were acquired, but last year, that number dropped to 28, according to 451 Research, which tracks mergers and acquisitions in the space. So far this year, only one deal has closed (that was for Totsy buying the assets of Mamasource).

The last notable deal was when Chase Bank purchased San Francisco-based Bloomspot for $35 million in December.

Even with the acquisition of CrowdSavings by Half Off Depot, the combined entity will still have a minuscule footprint. All told, nCrowd will have two million registered users who are signed up to receive daily emails in 17 markets. The company employs 70 people, who serve locations that are mostly in the South and Midwest, including Atlanta, Tampa, Jacksonville and Kansas City.

Half Off Depot bought CrowdSavings for about 6.5 million shares and about $1.5 million in cash, according to sources familiar with the transaction.

“We compete with Groupon, but we used to compete with 600 daily deals sites. There aren’t that many left anymore compared to how it used to be,” said Brian Conley, CEO of nCrowd (previously of Half Off Depot).

Conley said the four-year-old company has been able to stay afloat by expanding beyond daily deals to social commerce, which means assisting merchants with running Facebook contests and helping them to improve customer retention.

I first talked to Chad Jaquays, CEO of Crowdsavings.com, a year and a half ago, when his company was considered the most active acquirer in the daily deals space — in fact, it was so acquisitive that he built a page on the company’s website announcing, “We Buy Deal Sites.”

Many of the deals were tiny, costing Jaquays roughly $100,000 to $400,000 apiece. He was interested in acquiring more subscribers, but he also took other factors into consideration, like how many of those subscribers had purchased a deal before. In all, he purchased 15 companies, and now he’s found someone interested in buying his own.

The next logical question is, what’s the end goal? Will nCrowd ever get to Groupon’s scale?

Conley isn’t disillusioned.

“Who knows what the future holds,” he said. “I will make no prognostications as to whether we can beat the fastest-growing company ever. But we do feel like we have a unique value proposition for the merchants. Once it is well-understood, this thing could take off.”

On Tuesday, Zynga appeased investors by beating its already lowered expectations for the period and exceeding analysts’ expectations.

It also showed critical progress on mobile, where one-quarter of the company’s monthly active users are now playing its games — that’s 72 million people out of 298 million monthly average users in total, making for a very large market across both Facebook and smartphones.

Just yesterday, there was some additional good news for the struggling games company.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gave conditional support to in-state Internet gambling, a market that will benefit Zynga as it looks for potential new revenue sources.

To date, most of Zynga’s real-money gaming efforts have been focused in the U.K., where online gambling has been legal for a while. Zynga confirmed on Tuesday that it still plans to launch games there during the first half of the year. Additionally, it said its real-money games would also be available on Facebook in the U.K., where the social network has only conducted a few minor tests to date.

Zynga’s stock soared 11 percent today, or 34 cents, to $3.43 a share. The stock has not traded that high — at least consistently – since July. While today’s rise is encouraging, shares are still down more than 75 percent from a high of $15.91.

Other gambling stocks also jumped following the news out of New Jersey, including Caesars Entertainment, which saw its shares rise 38 percent, or $3.84 a share, to close at $13.91.

What’s particularly important to note about the measure that Christie has endorsed is that it would permit a kind of reciprocity with other states where online gambling is legal. Zynga has already begun the long process of getting licenses in Nevada, so conceivably it would not have to jump through as many hoops to begin operating in New Jersey. And reciprocity would be essential to making a big enough market.

While many investors are obviously thrilled about the prospects of online gambling, it’s hard to know how much revenue it will produce. Dennis Farrell, a gambling-industry analyst for Wells Fargo, told The Wall Street Journal that online gambling could generate between $650 million and $850 million in annual revenue for the industry in the near term, assuming around 5.8 million people gamble on the sites.

The company is backed by $3 million in funding from GRP Partners’ Mark Suster, 500 Startups’ Dave McClure and other angels, including Brian Lee, David Tisch and Jason Calacanis, and was founded by Ethan Anderson, who sold his first startup, Redbeacon, to The Home Depot last year.

Anderson calls the service “the world’s first online open appointment superstore” because it aggregates local merchant calendars in one place online. So far, the company has launched in Los Angeles, where it is working with a few thousand merchants, who have more than half a million appointments available for the next month.

Categories include automotive, health and beauty, home and garden, medical and dental, sports and fitness and pets, but not restaurants or other food services.

On the consumer-facing side, customers come to the site to find open appointments, then book and pay for the services in advance, whether for that day or later.

For the merchant, the service is all about finding new customers and getting new people in the door, much like Groupon.

MyTime will help local service providers fill unused inventory by advertising on Google, Facebook and Twitter. The site will also dynamically price the services, so if there is free time coming up immediately – or in generally slow times or hours — MyTime will encourage customers to book by offering a discount.

The service is free for merchants to get started, but if they elect to use some of MyTime’s premium services, like dynamic pricing or its advertising services, then MyTime will take a 40 percent cut of the revenue it generates from bookings that occur because of the advertisements.

“It’s a generous business model,” Anderson said. “If we are promoting them, only then do we keep the commission. If someone just finds them through the browse or search features, then we don’t charge them. It’s a freemium service.”

However, a majority of businesses do elect for MyTime to advertise on their behalf, he said.

It takes about a day for a company to get up and running and to connect its calendar to MyTime’s system. Merchants then get paid within one to seven days of a customer’s appointment.

The San Francisco-based company has 15 employees and plans to use the cash raised for salaries and sales and marketing. Anderson said they’ll expand to new markets slowly because the service requires a large number of merchants to be on board for it to work. He said if they don’t have a lot of appointments available for customers to choose from, it’s like a retailer being out of stock (in other words, it just doesn’t work).

Interestingly, MyTime didn’t pick San Francisco as its first market because “there are so many startups calling merchants here. Five years into the Groupon craze, and I really feel like they are jaded.”