The company, which has made a big push into Facebook games in the last six months, says it will use the new money to develop more games for the social network, as well as for Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform.

The new money brings OMGPOP’s total funding to $16.6 million over its four-year history.

However, even with the masses descending upon Las Vegas this week, Cricket has decided to delay the Muve music service and the launch of its first Muve-compatible phone.

Cricket had hoped to launch service in Las Vegas this week along with a number of other markets later this month.

Under its revised time frame, Cricket plans to launch the service in Las Vegas later this month, add nine more cities in February and roll it out to the rest of its markets this spring.

Although all the necessary licensing is in place, Cricket spokesman Greg Lund said that the company needed the extra time to ensure all of the software bugs were ironed out before it started asking customers to pay for the service.

“It’s got to be just perfect,” Lund told Mobilized in an interview at CES in Las Vegas.

The company, best known for its prepaid phones, is offering a new service called Muve Music, which includes the cost of unlimited music downloads as part of a $55 monthly cellphone plan that also includes unlimited talk, text and Web. Basically, Muve adds about $10 to the cost of the monthly cellphone tab (which, incidentally, is about what one can expect to pay for the typical subscription music service).

The music is downloaded directly to the cellphone and is accessible as long as you remain a subscriber. From a technology standpoint, the service works by transferring the music to a secure partition of a 4GB digital memory card in the phone; Cricket says that partition can hold about 3,000 songs.

Cricket is launching the service next month with a single compatible phone–a color touchscreen feature phone known as the Samsung Suede, which will sell for $199. The service will first be available Jan. 6 in Las Vegas, with about 10 of Cricket’s other markets due to come on board later in the month.

What makes the service interesting is the approach–there is no tie to a PC whatsoever. Music comes to the phone, lives on the phone and is managed on the phone. In an interview, Cricket Vice President Jeff Toig said the service is geared to Cricket’s base of customers, many of whom don’t have a PC and broadband connection. It also allows them to get their music the way they do their other cellphone services–by paying in cash at the company’s retail outlets, thereby eliminating the need for a credit card.

The downside, of course, is that the music can only be played on the phone, though the phone can connect to a car stereo or external speakers over bluetooth or via a 3.5mm cable.

On the plus side, Muve doesn’t add much to the cost of a cellphone plan and eliminates some of the complexity traditionally associated with digital music. In addition to the ability to download and play tracks from all four major music labels, Muve subscribers can set any track to be either a ringtone or ringback tone (the music heard by callers while they are waiting for someone to answer).

Nokia tried a somewhat similar approach with its “Comes With Music” phones, which debuted in 2008. In that program, the cost of the music subscription was included in the price of the phone rather than in the monthly cellphone bill. Others, such as SpiralFrog, have tried to create services relying on advertising to subsidize the cost of providing music free to the end user.

Toig said that his customer base is one that typically isn’t downloading music from iTunes at 99 cents a pop, but includes a fair number of people that illegally download music from file sharing services.

The new service, he said, allows them to have a better experience without having to spend much more than they already are, while giving the record industry a chance to reach digital music customers they are largely missing out on today.

Unlike other services, which Toig said bank on the fact that people have access to a computer, Muve tries to make it easy to discover and download music directly from the phone. Customers can subscribe to curated feeds of music that get automatically updated, as well as find and download albums by name. A built-in social network allows them to see what their friends are listening to (assuming they also have a Muve-compatible phone).

“Nobody has done mobile music right,” Toig said.

Cricket won’t say how much of the incremental $10 in monthly revenue it is getting goes to the labels, but Toig said part of the bet is that Cricket will be able to reach customers that it otherwise could not.

“We’re obviously not doing this for a few percent,” he said. “We think this has appeal beyond our base to segments Cricket has not appealed to before.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s company is working hard to win over heavyweight content distributors, hoping to convince them to link their sites up with Facebook, or to make their existing links deeper. The pitch: Connect your site to ours, and we’ll drive you eyeballs and help you hang on to them. And in return, we’d like to know more about your users.

Facebook has been headed in this direction for a while, and made a big move in April when it rolled out its “Like” button to outside sites. Some two million of them have now integrated the social network in some form.

But Facebook has made a point of wooing big media companies in the past few months. It has hired New York-based ambassadors specifically for the task, and is sending top executives out east for schmoozes. It might be working.

For instance: Facebook and Time Warner are now talking about using the social network’s login system to “authenticate” cable subscribers who want to watch online video from cable channels like TBS and HBO. Sources familiar with the companies’ plans say they are in early stages, but that the two companies are hoping to link up first with Verizon’s FiOS TV  service.

The upside for Time Warner and Verizon: It will be easy for customers to sign into Web video sites, and easy for them to tell their Facebook friends what they’re doing. That can drive more traffic and engagement, and ultimately more ad dollars or more subscribers.

And the upside for Facebook: It gets incredibly valuable data.

If that linkup goes through, it will be a big deal for pay TV operators, who have been wary about letting outsiders act as gatekeepers between their subscribers and their content. That’s why Facebook and Time Warner want to work with Verizon, a newcomer to the TV business, instead of established cable giants like Comcast.

The proposed Time Warner-Facebook linkup is a good example of what Facebook is trying to accomplish across the board. It wants to insert itself between media companies and their consumers–with “Share” buttons, “Like” buttons and Facebook Connect logins–but in a way that makes both groups happy about the arrangement.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Dan Rose, the company’s VP of partnerships, made a version of that pitch to senior Time Warner executives in a meeting last week. The pair also hosted a presentation and dinner for about 20 other big Web publishers, including executives from ESPN, the New York Times, Condé Nast, CBS and at least one media celebrity. “Tina Brown was actually there, which I thought was sort of hilarious,” says one attendee.

Facebook has also hired two New York-based executives tasked specifically with getting big media companies on board: Andy Mitchell, previously a VP of business development at the Daily Beast, and Nick Grudin, who held the same title at Newsweek.

Executives who’ve attended the meetings say media companies seem reasonably receptive to Facebook’s approach. In part, it seems, it’s because the company isn’t Apple or Google, two heavyweights that can make Web publishers wary.

“Facebook doesn’t attest to be perfect about being perfectly transparent about where they’re going. But they’re pretty predictable,” says one meeting participant. “It’s not like Apple, where they’re closed.”

Add another: “It was very friendly. It wasn’t like meetings we’ve had with Google, where everyone’s arms are crossed.”

But publishers are also realistic–they realize by trading user data for traffic and engagement, they’re helping to build up a company that is already competing with them for ad dollars. “In the end, they’re like the other big guys,” says another attendee. “They’re both friend and foe simultaneously.”

However, we’re starting to get more information about how the McDonald’s incident appears connected to hacking incidents at other sites. Chicago Business is reporting that the company responsible for McDonald’s email marketing is Silverpop Systems, and that it had been operating under a subcontract from Chicago-based Arc Worldwide.

So who else is a customer of Silverpop? Yesterday I received an email from someone who’s a customer of deviantArt, a social network where artists share their creations. DeviantArt has a base of 13 million users. Got an account there? You’d better change any passwords that overlap with other sites. The site advised customers that their accounts were compromised, and blamed Silverpop.

It could extend much further yet. Silverpop has more than 100 clients, and not all of them are publicly disclosed, though here are a few, found on its client quotes page and its case studies page: Stamps.com, Pitney Bowes/Mapinfo, Encyclopedia Britannica, Santander Consumer Finance and watchmaker Fossil. There’s no word how any of those other companies are affected, if at all.

Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey said in a blog message to customers that the FBI is investigating the incident, and that only a small percentage of Silverpop customers have been affected. He also said that Silverpop was “among several technology providers targeted as part of a broader cyber attack.” Stacy Kirk, a Silverpop spokeswoman, wouldn’t say anything beyond what’s in Nussey’s message.

I’m beginning to wonder if there’s some indirect connection between what happened to Silverpop and what happened to Gawker. I’m speculating here, but it’s no stretch of the imagination that numbering among deviantArt’s 13 million users are some of the 1.5 million people whose accounts were compromised in the Gawkergate affair. And the FBI is investigating both. Thomas Plunkett, Gawker’s technology chief, told me by email that there’s no evidence of a connection. Then again, as Business Insider tells it, he hasn’t yet had his meeting with the FBI.

Maybe I’m looking for connections that aren’t really there, but it’s really not hard to see how the breach at Gawker could turn out be the start of a domino effect that’s much larger than anyone has yet realized. There certainly is a lot of grumbling about changing passwords today.

If you know more more about any of this, get in touch!

Below is the email to deviantArt users.

From: deviantART.com (address deleted)
Date: Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 5:54 AM
Subject: RE: Email Notice

Silverpop Systems, Inc., a leading marketing company that sends email messages for its clients, told us that information was taken from its servers. This was probably part of a sweep by spammers. As a result, email addresses belonging to deviantART members were copied. Corresponding usernames and birth date may also have been removed.

We can assure you that nothing occurred on our systems with respect to this incident and no access was gained to private information on deviantART’s servers.

As a member of deviantART, you certainly have a right to know when an incident of this kind occurs. Unfortunately spammers are an unavoidable part of living on the Web.

The likely result of this event might be an increase in spam to your email. Experts have told us that there is an increase in email scams out there on the Internet and you should be cautious. Only click links or download attachments from people you know, particularly if they ask for personal information, and be sure that your email service provider has adequate spam filters.

Because we value the information that members give us, we have decided not to rely on the services of Silverpop in the future and their servers will no longer hold any data from us.