A Million Users? Pshaw. What’s a Hit in Today’s Metrics?

How to spot meaningful growth for a new app or service when so many things are blowing up so fast.
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Rovio Passes a Billion Angry Birds Downloads, Still Mulling IPO

When, whether and where to go public is up to Rovio’s owners, CEO Mikael Hed tells AllThingsD.
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News Byte

Angry Birds Space Hits 50 Million Downloads in Just Over a Month

Rovio said on Monday that its Angry Birds Space game has been downloaded more than 50 million times since its release on March 22. That, Rovio says, makes the title the fastest-growing mobile game to date.

Fake Angry Birds Slingshot Malware Onto Android Phones

Rovio and antivirus makers are warning of malware-laden software posing as the latest in the disgruntled aviary game franchise.
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Amazon Matches Apple’s Revenue Split for In-App Payments

Starting today, Amazon is letting developers in its Appstore sell digital content and subscriptions within their apps, and has confirmed that it will take a standard 30 percent cut of revenue.
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News Byte

New York Times Game Lets You Blow Up the New York Times

Now this is how you promote a long, thinky story on the Web: Tack a free, super easy shoot-’em-up game at the top. The story is a new piece in the New York Times magazine, about the rise of casual games like Angry Birds. The game lets you destroy, Asteroids-style, most of the Web page surrounding it, including the ads. Poynter’s Steve Myers has more.

BlueStacks’ Android-on-Windows App Hits Beta

The start-up says the code is in pretty good shape, though it is still figuring out how much it will charge consumers.
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News Byte

Angry Birds Space Hits 10 Million Downloads in Three Days

Rovio said Monday that its Angry Birds Space game has been downloaded more than 10 million times since it was made available on Thursday. The program is either free and ad-supported or paid, depending on the platform, and runs on on Android, iOS, Mac and PC.

Windows Phone Users Will Get Angry Birds Space, Eventually

Rovio’s CEO tells Reuters that the company is working to bring its just released game to Microsoft’s phone operating system, but doesn’t give a time frame.
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What It Means Now That Zynga Has Bought Its Way Back to the Top of the Charts

By acquiring OMGPOP, Zynga may have set the expectation that if it doesn’t create the most popular game organically — it will acquire it.
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Angry Birds Make Plans to Head Into Space