Kyle
Play140 CEO Shawn Broderick and his team thought they were onto something that could be game changing. The company had built an acronym game, called The Acronym Game, to be played on Twitter. Their thinking was simple, make Twitter more than just communication. It was a novel idea, play games on Twitter, I mean everyone was doing it on Facebook.
The game was simple, see who could make the most clever phrase out of the acronym provided. For whatever reason the game never took off. The company’s Twitter feed shut down and they stopped posting on their blog. Boston.com reports that the employees of the company, including two of the three co-founders went to find other jobs. That left Broderick and the company’s CTO Michael Johnson left manning what was left of the game.
Fast forward to this week and they’ve had some rather exciting news. A venture funded startup called Oomba has acquired Play140 for an undisclosed amount. What’s really interesting is that this startup’s founders include Nolan Bushnell. Now if y you’re thinking that name sounds familiar, it’s because Bushnell founded Atari and Chuck E Cheese among other feats in his career.
More after the break
Oomba is still in stealth mode. Their website claims they are “Masters of Digital Object Trading” While it’s not very descriptive, the site invited me to put a virtual quarter into one of those vending machines where you get a prize in a little plastic case. I did that and received an “Ari Oomba” it also said that this was a rare Oomba. Perhaps I am lucky. There appears to be 14 more of these virtual goodies that I am able to get.
Their Angellist entry described Oomba like this:
Oomba is a Digital Object Trading™ platform that communicates with the virtual goods databases of online and mobile games through a secure, robust protocol. Working with the voluntary cooperation of game publishers, transactions can be initiated, escrowed and recorded by Oomba with complete accountability to the buyers and sellers.
So perhaps it’s a way to bank, store and trade your virtual currency from other games?
When this all comes together we can guarantee it will be at least interesting. With one of the godfathers of video gaming at the helm it will be interesting to see where Oomba goes. As far as Oomba itself, boston.com reports that many of the Oomba staffers are relocating to Cambridge, which according to Broderick, is now OOmba’s nexus.
Linkage:
Go get yourself a free Oomba here
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