Virtual Goods News

Yesterday the social game developer Playdom, maker of 8 of the top 25 social games on MySpace, exited stealth mode to reveal that it would be expanding to Facebook and iPhone later this year. Playdom was formerly known as YouPlus and is the developer of the number one MySpace social game, Mobsters, a mafia game with 13.4 million monthly active users that monetizes through virtual goods and currency sales.

"23 per cent of our users come to our games every day," said Playdom chairman and co-founder Rick Thompson in an interview with PocketGamer.biz. "We think this user engagement is part of our secret sauce and our success. But what we're doing now is going beyond MySpace, and mobile is particularly important to us."

Playdom's iPhone plans center on bringing a version Mobsters to the platform called Mobsters: Big Apple. From there, Playdom will follow that up with original games that use specific iPhone features like geolocation. Playdom is interested in expanding to other mobile handsets in the future.

"My next interest would be BlackBerry, once they have a large enough commitment to their app store and marketing around that," said Yue to PocketGamer.biz. "There seems to be a large affinity between BlackBerry and MySpace users, so it would make sense to us."

Playdom's business model with Mobsters and its other titles is oriented toward microtransactions, a feature that Apple is not yet supporting in the App Store. Most of Playdom's hopes for Mobsters on iPhone seem to rest with the company's track record of high conversion rates in its MySpace userbase. 

"The more engaged players are, the more l