In a third round of capital, Kabam raised $30 million, led by Redpoint Ventures, with Intel Capital and Canaan Partners participating.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, which has such titles on Facebook as Kingdoms of Camelot, Dragons of Atlantis and Glory of Rome, is focused on developing massively multiplayer games like Activision’s super successful Call of Duty: Black Ops on Xbox.

As social gaming has ramped up, titles so far have been more mellow, focusing on attracting the largest audience possible. Therefore, many titles by category leaders like Zynga have had a wholesome flavor, focusing on activities in daily life, like farming and cooking. Typically, the games take only a few minutes per session, and users interact with friends when asking for goods or helping each other out on tasks.

However, Kabam has integrated more traditional features into its games, such as battles and fights, that require more strategy. It also allows players to interact with one another via real-time chat.

Kabam, which has been flying fairly under the radar, has 200 employees, up from 20 in the beginning of the year, and has additional studios in San Francisco, China and Germany. In October, it acquired Wonderhill, and this year it plans to launch more games, continue hiring and make additional acquisitions.

A $30 million round by investors signals that the social gaming market is still far from mature, with growth opportunities and niches still remaining–despite Zynga’s dominance and major acquisitions by some of the top game producers, like Electronic Arts and Disney, already having taken place.

Skype did not confirm the price, which was rumored to be about $100 million, according to BusinessInsider.com.

Skype said Qik has 60 employees, headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., and has an office in Moscow, Russia, and that it expects to close the transaction later this month.

Qik runs on more than 200 mobile phones, including Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile. It also comes preloaded on a wide variety of mobile handsets through valuable ç it has inked with handset manufacturers and wireless carriers. The partnerships helped rocket Qik’s growth. At the beginning of 2010, Qik had 600,000 users, and it ended the year with five million.

Qik has been trying to position itself as the alternative to Apple’s FaceTime application, which allows people to make video-conferencing calls from their iPhone 4. However, one of the biggest complaints about Qik is lack of integration into a users’ phone book. Presumably, Skype could bring some of that functionality to the table since many users already have built up their address book within their interface.

Skype also mentioned it plans to take advantage of Qik’s engineering expertise for optimizing video transmission over wireless networks. One cool feature that Qik has, and Skype doesn’t, is that it allows people to share videos in real time, and also record and store them to view later.

The shift can be seen in Redwood City, where many tech companies long have made their homes–but primarily in the Redwood Shores office parks where Oracle Corp. and Electronic Arts Inc. are headquartered. This year, a trickle of start-ups has moved into downtown Redwood City, with digital ad companies Turn Inc., YuMe Inc. and compensation research firm Equilar Inc., among others, relocating to the area since January.

“We used to be located in the Redwood Shores area, but I didn’t like it because it was too remote,” says Bill Demas, chief executive of Turn, which moved into a 10,000-square-foot office in the restored late 19th-century Alhambra building in downtown Redwood City in January. “We wanted to be in a more urban location, we wanted more restaurants and bars near us.”

Redwood City is just the latest beneficiary of a downtown migration by start-ups. In Mountain View, demand is high for offices around its downtown Castro Street area. In Palo Alto, start-ups are seeking space around lively University Avenue. Commercial vacancy rates are particularly low in the downtown areas of some Silicon Valley towns, with downtown Menlo Park’s prime office space just 3.3 percent vacant in the second quarter compared with the city’s overall 14.8 percent commercial vacancy rate, according to Cornish & Carey Commercial Newmark Knight Frank.

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When BoomTown was kibitzing with SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg about where to meet up this week for a chat to catch up, we decided to forgo the obvious and instead choose the complete Silicon Valley cliche of the moment.

Destination: Redwood City and the now-infamous Gourmet Haus Staudt.

As in, the beer garden behind the German grocery store where the iPhone 4G prototype was snatched off a stool from a birthday-celebrating Apple (AAPL) engineer by person still unknown and sold to the now-police-shookdown Gizmodo gadget site.

In other words, just like going to the Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) or Google (GOOG) garage, but fun and with German beer.

We chatted with a very delightful bartender, who filled us in a bit on the night–about the birthday party, about the funky place being popular with tech folk and about how most patrons believe the smartphone was stolen.

There is a lost-and-found behind the bar, he said, and pretty much everyone returns items left by ale-addled customers.

And, let me just say, if the conspiracy theory types who think Apple planned the whole thing saw this charming, but dowdy, joint, they’d think twice about some fiendish plot by CEO Steve Jobs.

This is a perfect place to lose an iPhone or anything else you can imagine.

In any case, we’ll see how it all plays out in the days ahead.

Until then, although no video was allowed, but here are some lovely snaps from my in-my-possession-despite-the-giant-glass-o-beer 3G iPhone to enjoy (click on the images to make them larger):

Unassuming Front:

Window With Gnome and German Hat-Wearing Lion (Also Beer, Natch!):

Dave Points Out the Obvious:

Dave and the Sign:

More Sign (Nine! No, 11! No, 13 German beers on tap!):

Stools of No Return:

Gemütlichkeit-filled Dave und Bier Nicht Mehr:

Gizmodo claims it is and it certainly appears to be a legitimate Apple prototype. “Found” in a bar in Redwood City, Calif., (reportedly running iPhone OS 4), the device boasts a number of new features. Among them: A front-facing camera, improved back-camera with flash, Micro-SIM, a screen with a seemingly higher resolution, and a new glass and aluminum design more akin to the iPad.

Could it be a fake? Perhaps, but as Gizmodo notes, the device’s build, design and internal components reek of Apple (AAPL). Beyond this, it behaves like an iPhone when connected to a computer and its internals feature a number of parts clearly labeled “APPLE.”

“We get false tips all the time,” the site explains. “But after playing with it for about a week–the overall quality feels exactly like a finished final Apple phone–and disassembling this unit, there is so much evidence stacked in its favor, that there’s very little possibility that it’s a fake. In fact, the possibility is almost none. Imagine someone having to use Apple components to design a functioning phone, from scratch, and then disseminating it to people around the world. Pretty much impossible.”

Indeed, my guess is that Apple is getting ready to throw the person responsible for losing this off the roof of 1 Infinite Loop. Or it’s investigating the incident as a potential theft.

Below, Gizmodo’s too-short video overview of the device. You’ll find additional pictures, longer videos and a more detailed tear-down here.

[Image, video credits: Gizmodo]

A few weeks ago, BoomTown motored down to Silicon Valley, to the Redwood City, Calif., HQ of Zazzle, the online site that lets users order a variety of custom products by using a special (and patented) printing technology.

I went to talk to the Beaver brothers–Jeff and Bobby, who founded the company with their father, who is CEO, way back before the first Web 1.0 bubble burst in 1999–about recent changes, including finding more ways to slap custom designs on more products and recent international expansion.

Funded to the tune of $46 million by Kleiner Perkins and Sherpalo Ventures, Zazzle’s profitable business essentially remains pretty straightforward: A customer can pick from both branded and user-generated designs for a variety of items, such as T-shirts, shoes, skateboards and more.

Zazzle also offers a marketplace, under a commission structure, for those who do contribute designs.

But in the video below, the pair talk about the more intriguing and more innovative idea of making pretty much every retail product completely customizable and available on demand.

It’s an interesting idea, to be sure, and probably inevitable.

Here’s the video of the interview, as well as a tour of Zazzle’s offices:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091224/the-beaver-brothers-of-zazzle-talks-about-customizing-well-everything/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20090520/billshrinks-pham-speaks-about-the-t-mobile-deal-the-econalypse-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20090520/billshrinks-pham-speaks-about-the-t-mobile-deal-the-econalypse-and-more/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 13:00:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=13779

Last week, BoomTown paid an economically-minded visit to the Redwood City, Calif., offices of BillShrink, a Silicon Valley start-up aimed at helping consumers find cheaper prices on gas, cellphones and plans and credit cards via a Web-based comparison and alert system.

Launched about a year ago and armed with about $9 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures, it has aims of moving into a range of other money-saving arenas too.

But today, it got a major boost in its existing business by inking a deal to be part of a huge national advertising campaign by T-Mobile aimed at boosting price awareness among consumers, an apt message for these econalyptic times.

The ads will start tonight in a big way on the finale of “American Idol” and will star Catherine Zeta-Jones, who asks consumers in high-profile television commercials if they want a “mobile makeover.”

Cue BillShrink, even if it does not end up recommending T-Mobile’s service.

It is the first time the mobile carrier has recommended a third-party Web site and one that is independent. T-Mobile must, given it is the No. 4 player and has to beat the bigger players with a curve ball.

While BillShrink does make money from referrals of vendors, BillShrink CEO Peter Pham said the service it delivers to consumers must remain unbiased to render the right comparison results to consumers.

I sat down and talked with Pham, a former Photobucket exec, about all this and also where BillShrink is headed next.

Here’s the video interview:

And here is the T-Mobile commercial:

Finally, here is the press release from T-Mobile about the campaign:

T-Mobile Aims to Help Wireless Customers Save Money by Offering ‘Mobile Makeovers’

BELLEVUE, Wash., May 20, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE)–T-Mobile USA, Inc. announced today a new campaign dedicated to helping people save money on their wireless service, and unveils a familiar face to inform customers that T-Mobile has “the coverage you need at the price you want.”

T-Mobile is prompting wireless customers to compare the value they are getting with their current wireless provider against other national carriers. People can visit T-Mobile retail stores or http://www.T-Mobile.com for a Mobile Makeover(SM), at no charge, by linking customers to BillShrink, an independent third-party service that provides people with free, unbiased and personalized savings recommendations for everyday bills such as wireless plans, credit cards and gasoline.

“Providing great wireless coverage at a great price is at the heart of what T-Mobile offers,” said Denny Marie Post, chief marketing officer, T-Mobile USA, Inc. “We’re so confident that T-Mobile provides the best overall experience for a majority of Americans, we’re willing to put our value to the test by pointing people to an independent source. And while we may not come out on top each and every time, we believe a majority of people will see T-Mobile offers them the value they want, and the best experience in wireless.”

According to BillShrink, as many as eight out of 10 people unknowingly overpay for their wireless service.* BillShrink analyzes a customer’s wireless usage, along with wireless coverage in a customer’s area and service price, to provide recommendations to help people find the best value options. “Wireless customers need quality cell phone coverage at the best available price so BillShrink helps people easily navigate through millions of wireless plan combinations to provide a personalized recommendation,” said Peter Pham, CEO, BillShrink. “BillShrink shows people how to save money on their everyday bills and still get the best level of service.”

To help drive home the message that millions of Americans could save money on their wireless service, a familiar face and voice, Catherine Zeta-Jones, is again featured in T-Mobile’s television advertising. In the ads, she prompts people to get a Mobile Makeover in order to help determine if they are currently paying too much for their wireless services, and where to find the best value, based on their individual needs.

“As an avid T-Mobile customer, I’m delighted once again to help T-Mobile carry its message to millions of Americans about the great value they deliver,” Zeta-Jones said. “The Mobile Makeover campaign is a smart way to show consumers that they could save some serious money.”

The first television spot featuring Ms. Zeta-Jones will air tonight during the American Idol season finale on FOX. It features a group of Ivy League economists trying to educate homeowners they’re paying too much for their cell phone service, only to have door after door slammed in their face. Finally, a homeowner is pleasantly surprised when he opens the door to see Zeta-Jones standing on his doorstep asking, “Do you have time for a Mobile Makeover?” Zeta-Jones will be featured in two additional Mobile Makeover television spots in the coming weeks.

Online advertising, local radio, out-of-home advertising, retail collateral, and online video opportunities also will carry T-Mobile value and Mobile Makeover messaging.

For more information about Mobile Makeover and T-Mobile’s products and services, please visit a T-Mobile retail store, or go to http://www.T-Mobile.com. More information about BillShrink can be found at http://www.BillShrink.com.

*8 of 10 claim based on January 2009 sample of consumers who used BillShrink.com to analyze their reported usage. BillShrink.com is not operated or controlled, and the information/results provided on this site are not verified, by T-Mobile. See T-Mobile.com for rate plan information.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090520/billshrinks-pham-speaks-about-the-t-mobile-deal-the-econalypse-and-more/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090409/will-wright%e2%80%99s-future-in-toasters/ http://allthingsd.com/20090409/will-wright%e2%80%99s-future-in-toasters/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:36:53 +0000 Ben Charny http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=10508 Videogame creator Will Wright’s employment at Electronic Arts (ERTS) is toast–the very breakfast food that’s helped to inspire the next stage of his career.

On Wednesday, the man behind games such as Spore and Sim City resigned from the Redwood City, Calif.-based company to concentrate on his eight-year-old think tank, Stupid Fun Club, which aims to bring games to a host of new platforms.

Potentially among them: Toasters.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090409/will-wright%e2%80%99s-future-in-toasters/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081103/rockyou-raises-17-million-for-asian-expansion-and-new-and-improved-widgets/ http://allthingsd.com/20081103/rockyou-raises-17-million-for-asian-expansion-and-new-and-improved-widgets/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:00:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=5952

Yet another Web 2.0 wunderkind got itself more shelter from the economic storm–widget maker RockYou announced today that it has nabbed a $17 million investment from two Asian firms, SoftBank Group and SK Telecom Ventures.

The investment will be added to $35 million from the Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up’s C round in June. Overall, RockYou has raised a total of $67 million from investors, including DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and Sequoia Capital.

It is unclear if the company’s valuation is at the previous $400 million level or not.

In a video interview with BoomTown on Friday (see below), the company’s co-founders, CEO Lance Tokuda and CTO Jia Shen, said the money would be used to expand into the Asia-Pacific market, including onto Xiaonei, one of China’s largest social-networking sites.

As part of the investment, SoftBank–which has major Web investments all over Asia–and RockYou, the company said in a press release, “will also set up a new joint venture company that will develop widget and application products and services for use on PCs and mobile devices in the Asian market, in particular the Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Chinese markets.”

Well, that’s a horse of a different color, what with most Web 2.0 outfits pulling in their horns of late.

Indeed, RockYou said it would also use the money to open offices in New York, Los Angeles and Detroit and look at making some opportunistic acquisitions, as well as adding to its advertising sales force and developing more brand and vertical channels.

The company’s NYC sales office, previously a one-man shop, is expanding, adds MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka. It hired two people since August and still has one position open and plenty of applicants, says sales boss Paul van de Kamp.

Why all the frenetic activity from RockYou, which says it had over 100 million monthly uniques with over eight billion page views from its popular third-party applications like Super Wall?

Well, a few good reasons, such as: the need to keep up with its key competitor, Slide, which raised its own huge war chest; to find new audiences away from the two top social-networking site, Facebook and MySpace, from which it gets most of its traffic; to improve its products, in order to get better ad rates; and, most of all, to weather the current econalypse in the ad sector.

While RockYou’s execs believe the ad market for widgets and social networking is on the rise in comparison to other kinds of media, it will still be a glum outlook for everyone for a while.

Tokuda and Shen talk about that, as well as the investment, in the video here, and below that is a video I did a year ago with the pair:

[ See post to watch video ]

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