A Tribute To My Personal Favorite New York CEO, Dan Porter, Wire Style

Dan Porter, the CEO of OMGPOP became Zynga’s New York chief when the popular social games company acquired the New York based company that created “Draw Something”.

Sure one of the main reasons I like Dan Porter so much is that he named every conference and meeting space in OMGPOP’s headquarters after characters from the hit HBO drama “The Wire”. Being from South Baltimore and having extrad a few times during the run of “The Wire” I naturally loved the idea of meeting rooms named after such influential characters as Avon Barksdale, Marlo Stansfield and Proposition Joe.

What came apparent though, as Zynga set sail with OMGPOP on board was that Porter was like the Stansfield character. Porter told it like it was, probably causing a major level of discomfort for Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.

Porter drew fire when Quartz, a business news website quoted him as saying that Zynga copies other publishers games.

Porter is leaving his post as vice president and general manager of Zynga’s New York operations. It’s unclear whether or not he is staying with the company. He is leaving his post as Draw Something 2 is preparing for release.

The original Draw Something caught on like wild fire. The game, which allows two players to play in a head to head win lose or draw style competition, was the game of the month right up until the sale to Zynga. It’s popularity faded as hits like SongPop started picking up steam.

The exact amount that Zynga paid for OMGPOP was never reported. What was reported, was the fact that Zynga had to write down $95 million dollars on the OMGPOP deal.

Even with all that in mind, Porter is credited with helping to move Zynga from the Facebook dependent social gaming space to the mobile screen. Reports surfaced on Monday morning that Zynga was about to unveil online gambling games in the UK as well.

While Zynga’s focus isn’t clear to anyone at the moment, we are confident that Porter’s is. So Dan closes your eyes, and breathe easy, your next big thing is right around the corner.

See why Dan Porter earned that bump like a mother fucker, here.

Kansas City Startup: Rare Wire Takes The Wraps Off Their Native Mobile App Building Platform

The do it yourself app space is getting crowded, however most of the DIY app building platforms are based on HTML 5 or just wrappers for mobile sites. What Matt Angell and Kirk Hasenzahl, the co-founders of Rare Wire have built is a platform for non-developers to build their own native apps.

If you’re not familiar with the term native apps, that’s an app that you download to your smartphone or other mobile device, that for the most part functions on it’s own on the hardware side. Non native apps require the backbone of the internet to operate on and HTML 5 in most cases. The advantage to native apps is that they are popular and give the developer and user a sense that the app is created specifically for what it was downloaded to do. The advantage to HTML 5 is that it’s truly multi-platform enabled.

Rare Wire is an app development firm that builds white label apps for clients like the United States Military Academy at West Point, Ebony Magazine and the Atlantic, so they have a bunch of credibility backing them. They’ve been using their platform, called The Wire, to build apps for their clients, but are now unleashing it to other developers. According Hasenzahl the platform that they’ve developed allows developers with just web development experience to design truly native apps.

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Dan Porter: You Earned That Bump Like A Mother Fucker

One of OMGPOP's "The Wire" Inspired Meeting Rooms (photo: Business Insider)

Dan Porter the CEO of OMGPOP became a very wealthy man yesterday. After six years of producing games and the blockbuster hit Draw Something, OMGPOP hit the big time being acquired yesterday by Zynga.

During the press conference call yesterday Porter highlighted how Zynga got exactly what OMGPOP was doing with Draw Something. He also spoke about how Zynga would back their mission with future games. Porter will become the VP and General Manager of Zynga’s New York office.

Porter shot up in my book ten fold today when I read this walk through of OMGPOP’s offices in Business Insider. With Jason Kincaid gone from TechCrunch it’s hard to find segments like TechCrunch Cribs anymore.

Of course the news of the OMGPOP Zynga merger made the office tour piece a goto piece today. But what I found out when I viewed the story is that Porter has had all of their meeting spaces named after the hit HBO drama “The Wire”

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