Shanda Launches Candy: A Mashup of Twitter, Facebook, and FourSquare
Candy (Tang Guo / 糖果) mixes microblogging, social games, and badges, a mashup of Twitter, Facebook, and FourSquare. While most social networks are scaling back social games to focus on real friends (e.g., Facebook, RenRen, and Kaixin001), Shanda’s Candy embraces games (with a semi-open platform) and nicknames.
It’s almost cliché for Chinese internet giants to launch a microblog or social network; nearly all have tried. The challenge for Candy (in Beta) is to gain initial traction and to achieve user retention. The latter could be challenging for such a casual site, there’s a reason the other social networks are moving away from that model.
Candy reflects Shanda’s effort to diversify into casual games. Over 86% of Shanda’s 768 million USD in 2009 revenues came from Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), while casual games accounted for just 12% of revenue. As Shanda’s bread-and-butter MMORPGs like Woool and Mir 2 age, it is imperative that the firm finds new hits or market models.
ChinaJoy: The Show Goes On, Despite Concerns that Hardcore Game Growth is Slowing
Originally posted at VentureBeat
ChinaJoy, China’s equivalent of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), is famous for its thousands of show girls, new title releases, and the flashy sports cars of the top executives behind it all. This glitz not only attracts droves of young men—potential gamers—like moths to a light, but also reflects the rich fortunes of hardcore online games in China.