Omgpop was bought behind the scenes undertaking: pushed "You draw I guess" before nearly bankrupt

According to foreign media reports, on the night of Thursday, in Manhattan, New York luxury Black hotel on the second floor of a cocktail party, watching everyone cheerful eating a variety of self-help food, Charles Forman (Charles Forman) to the changes in the world feel sad unceasingly. Foreman said, "Yesterday, my bank account balance is only 1700 dollars, but now much more." "The party was to celebrate Zynga's successful takeover of Omgpop, Foreman created Omgpop, the New York gaming company. The luxury of the party is beyond imagination, and for omgpop employees, dreams are now in reality.

Omgpop's previous business situation has struggled until 7 weeks ago, when the "you draw I guess (Draw something)" This hot mobile game, the situation has improved, which also aroused the interest of Zynga. Last week, the leader of the social game, which launched Farmville, announced that it would buy Omgpop company at a price of 180 million dollars.

The success of "You draw me guess" has turned omgpop from an obscure, almost bankrupt start-up to a hot potato for the industry's giants to buy. The deal with Zynga also shows that the two companies are going to have a strong alliance with the kind of high-speed Internet development to keep their lead, lead the industry and create more wealth miracles. "Zynga has certainly bought a sizeable asset at lightning speed," said Lewis Ward, an analyst at IDC in the gaming industry. ”

"You draw I guess" is a game to look at puzzles, let the player by painting a picture and sent to friends, let friends guess this picture of the corresponding words, such as "swimming pool" or "starfish." Data from Zynga showed that the game was downloaded more than 35 million times since its release on February 6, with players producing more than 1 billion images in total.

Foreman, 32, is not directly involved in the development of "you draw my guess", and he left the company a year ago and is committed to creating another company, but continues to hold omgpop stock.

At first, Omgpop was not a gaming company. Foreman is a fitness fanatic and even has a close-up photo of his abs on Facebook's personal page. Six years ago, he created a dating site called "I Love You" (i ' m-like and you '), and users can send their photos to the site to take their chances.

Foreman said, "In the beginning, the whole company is actually a amateurs." "He used to take the site as an entertainment forum, until later he realized that the site had gathered quite a lot of popularity." In order to turn popularity into real money, he turned the site into a game site and renamed it Omgpop. "This is bound to be a classic case in the industry, and I'm not surprised," Foreman said of the company's success. ”

In 2008, Foreman dug up Tang Potter (Dan Porter) and appointed him CEO of the company. Potter is the former president of the American College of Education Program for American Teaching (Teach for America), and he has worked in other startups.

At first, Omgpop raised 17 million of billions of dollars from investors, developed 35 different games, but did not generate much revenue. Two former employees familiar with the company's finances said the company could be out of ammunition by May this year, at current rates of money without the great success of the "You draw me guess".

After the merger, Potter will become Zynga's operations director in New York, and he refuses to acknowledge the above, but he said, "We have raised enough money before the acquisition, but our game was not successful at the time, and this cannot be sustained." ”

Omgpop's first drawing game was made by Foreman and chief Technology Officer E. Developed jointly by J. Mablex (Mablekos), it is a web-based game called "Draw my Thing". The game is relatively strong, players in a limited time to guess according to the picture words, and let other players in the chat room to spell out the fastest speed.

Last fall, after Foreman left the company for personal reasons, Porter began to lead a team of five people to develop the game "you draw me guess".

Porter says some of his ideas come from a game played by his son and his friends at the Prospect Park in Brooklyn. If a son and a friend throw a ball 100 times without landing, Porter will give them two people to buy ice cream as a reward.

"At that moment, I suddenly realized that the game we developed should be the same as throwing the ball, because our idea is that players collaborate to do something together," Potter said. "You draw me guess" this game has no time limit, there is no real loss or win.

On the day of last month's release, Porter stared at the download counter. The download of that day reached 30,000, although not a bright feeling, but in 10 days, its download speed is exponential growth, in a short period of time reached 1 million.

People are starting to forward their pictures to Twitter and Facebook, which is very helpful for fast game promotion. "You draw me guess" was once the download champion of the Apple App Store, allowing more players to get to know and try it out for themselves. "You draw I guess" there are two versions: the 1 dollar paid version and the free version with the ads, both versions have additional game features, which brings the company a daily income of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"The speed of the game has never stopped, the greater the number of users, the more lucrative the profits," Porter said. ”

This success also led Omgpop to become a target for some big companies to chase. Soon, executives from Zynga, San Francisco, began to fly to New York to talk to Porter about acquisitions. "Zynga's omgpop chase shows that Zynga will focus on mobile app games as it makes a full profit on Facebook," says Ward of IDC.

Of course, Zynga moved very quickly, the deal was released in Tuesday, and nearly 40 Omgpop employees in Wednesday began reporting to Zynga. About 60 people attended the evening party, many of whom were Omgpop's employees, who celebrated, embraced and photographed each other.

Porter says he plans to take his family to Costa Rica for a trip before his new job takes office. Currently, Porter is in charge of operating picturelife photo storage service, he said that after the transaction was completed, he was excited, unexpectedly walked into the rolling traffic. "When I was crossing the street, I heard the roar of the car. It's all so surreal. ”