After meeting as high school students in 2002, Alex Benzer and Charlotte Genevier, co-founders of Webligo developed and launched Social Engine in 2007. The product is described as a social-network-in-a-box, a white label social networking application that is growing and now earns nearly $1MM/year according to the Webligo home page.
With dorm room offices and virtually zero operating costs, Webligo’s savings grew quickly. In 2006, Alex and Charlotte began developing a new product – SocialEngine – seeded with their sales and the recent acquisitions of two earlier projects (BlogHoster and IMS Pro). SocialEngine, 100% bootstrapped without any outside investment, was launched in 2007 with great reception. With SocialEngine now earning nearly $1M/year, Alex and Char have built a team of seven developers and designers to grow SocialEngine and explore other opportunities.
The only problem is, Webligo’s founders launched the product using the .net (socialengine.net), instead of the .com.
Now Webligo wants the .com, so the company has filed a WIPO complaint over the domain name SocialEngine.com.
While it’s not known whether Webligo made a previous offer on the .com domain, the company recently filed for a trademark on “Social Engine” in Sept. 2010, three years after launching their product, and nearly 11 years after the domain name socialengine.com was first registered.
The current registrant according to GoDaddy Whois is listed as “Domains for Sale” out of Columbus, OH, with an email address of DomainsForSale -at- Gmail.com.
Here’s a little more information about Social Engine, in a video pitch posted on TechCrunch back in 2008.
MafiaWars.com, Cityville.com, Rewardville.com, Warstorm.com, YoVille.com: As reported by Leena Rao of TechCrunch, social gaming is expected to be a billion-dollar business this year. And those businesses that are getting into the social gaming market will be looking for domain names.
As they did in 2010 and previous years, social gaming market leader Zynga will likely be looking for more domain names to use for their up-and-coming games.
Most recently, the company paid $4,500 for the domain name Rewardville.com at Sedo, which is rumored that it will be used for its virtual rewards system. Though Zynga hasn’t publicly confirmed plans for a Rewardville application, the company filed for a trademark in Europe as reported here on Fusible.com.
But Cityville.com and Rewardville.com weren’t the only publicly reported domain name purchases by Zynga on the aftermarket.
Zynga purchased Mafiawars.com in 2009 on Sedo GreatDomains for €23,500.00 (or about $33,100). Mafia Wars has gone on to be one of the top Facebook games, with nearly 3 million daily active users according to the latest Appdata metrics.
The company also owns Warstorm.com. Though Zynga didn’t directly buy the domain name Warstorm.com, it did buy the company Challenge Games that acquired the domain on Sedo in 2008 for $9,450.
But one of the best domain deals for what is now a Zynga-owned game, is that of Yoville.com, which was purchased for a measly $400 on Sedo in April 2008, shortly before Zynga purchased the Facebook game in July.
With the social gaming market looking to make history in 2011, so might sales of domain names that end up as Facebook games. Are you holding a winning lottery ticket?
The bigger technology sites and mainstream blogs often take credit for breaking news stories, even though some of those news stories are on occasion reported by bloggers first.
It seems that AOL’s blog over at Games.com is giving credit to Elliot’s Blog and the blog here at Fusible for breaking, then confirming the rumor that Zynga has plans for Rewardville.
Alexander Armero, the Games.com blogger that wrote the story titled, “RewardVille: Zynga plans a mysterious rewards program”, had this to say:
Hot on the heels of CityVille, Zynga may already be planning another release: RewardVille. Today, Fusible confirmed rumors that Zynga has big plans for this mysterious reward program.
The speculation about RewardVille solidified into fact when it was discovered that Zynga had actually filed a trademark for RewardVille back in mid December. Not only that, but they paid $4,500 for the website: rewardville.com. Would you pay that much for a website you didn’t plan on using? I think we can definitely expect to hear a lot more about RewardVille in the future.
Alexander speculates that Rewardville could be used for a new Zynga Lotto, or maybe a new game entirely. Whatever the case, at the time of this story, Rewardville.com now resolves to a GoDaddy.com parked page.
AOL Games.com
If you’re a fan of Zynga, you should check out the blog over at Games.com. The writers at Games.com do some of the best coverage on Zynga’s social gaming properties, including Cityville.
Rumor over on Elliot’s Blog is that Zynga, the popular social game development company, purchased the domain name Rewardville.com, possibly for a rewards program that was announced back in late November in a Zynga Press Release.
Being a big fan of Zynga, I did a little digging on the name Rewardville.
While the domain name, which recently sold through Sedo for $4,500, is privately registered and redirects to rewards.zynga.com as Elliot Silver noted in his story, here’s what I did find out that no other technology site or blog has reported.
Zynga filed for Trademark in Europe for word: Rewardville
In mid-December, Zynga Inc. filed for a European trademark that went unnoticed.
The trademark application can be found here, by typing the term “rewardville” in the trademark name search field.
Though Zynga’s ultimate plans for Rewardville are not known at this time, chances are it’ll end up being an online resource and directory of rewards programs offered between Zynga and its partners.
With Zynga’s latest Facebook game Cityville topping the charts as the most popular Facebook game in 2010, I thought I’d offer up a few predictions on Zynga’s next blockbuster game title in 2011. With Cityville, Farmville, and Frontierville numbering daily users in the millions, one can only guess what’s next for Zynga, like another game with “ville” in the title.
Back in late 2009, the game publisher went on a trademarking spree as pointed out by Games.com.
Libe Goad, wrote: “Zynga, the social game publisher responsible for FarmVille, PetVille, Mafia Wars and more, went on a trademarking spree during the month of December, securing 21 names for potential new games. Of course, many of the names follow the end with ‘ville,’ including TreasureVille, FrontierVille, CrimeVille and AnimalVille.”
The complete list of trademarks (which can viewed easily over at Trademarkia) included: Pet Hospital, Poker Blitz, Safari World, Treasureville, Zoo city, zoo island, mafia world, hotelville, hotel world, hospital world, hospitalville, frontierville, frontier world, frontier, crimeville, crime world, casino world, casino blitz, bountyville, animal world and animalville.
The game title Cityville, has spawned hundreds of domain registrations and websites with “cityville” in the name, ranging from CityvilleGuide.com to CityvilleGamecheats.net.
Zynga is known for using a myriad of companies and individuals for registering domain names, so predicting the next big game title might prove to be much harder. For example, the company used IP Cybercrime LLC to register its Cityville.com domain.
Predictions
What are your predictions for Zygna game titles in 2011?
Will the game developer go with a “ville” name? A “world” name?
Is the company somehow behind the recent buys of Songville.com, Dreamville.com, or Slotsville.com on Sedo? Or maybe RestaurantWorld.com (which was purchased for nearly $8,000 in September)?
The company has plenty of names to choose from, but who owns those names is the question. As I wrote about before, though Zynga might use a certain title for a game, it doesn’t always own the domain (even after launching the game).
Petville.com was launched in 2009 by Zynga, and the company acquired the domain name Petville.com from its previous owners for an undisclosed amount. Visit Petville.com, and a message at the top of the site reads: ‘the content that was previously found at petville.com can now be found at ipawz.com’.
Though Zynga owns Petville.com, Farmville.com and other ville domain names, it doesn’t own Fishville.com – which saw a spike in traffic according to Compete when the site launched in November 2009. It appears Zynga and the owners of Fishville.com couldn’t come to an agreement, but Zynga is doing just fine – its Fishville game owns nearly all the top spots on Google, and the company does own the .net which it uses for the game’s home page.
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