Sometime in next day or so, Tapulous will announce that it has accumulated 1 million users for its free iPhone game, Tap Tap Revenge . That's an accomplishment, but what's really interesting about the company is its overall strategy, since Tapulous is not, ultimately, a games company. I met recently with Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem and COO Andrew Lacy and to learn more. The company is a social networking play. As Decrem said with glee as he demo'd the two-player version of Tap Tap Revenge with me (when you play, you and your opponent take up position on either end of an iPhone), the game is highly social. "Look how close we are," he said. If I were a 14-year-old boy playing with a girl I liked, this game would be, "the best chance to kiss her." Spin the Bottle for the iPhone generation. The social underpinnings of the company go much deeper than that, fortunately. Tapulous is building a suite of different apps that connect to each other at a social level. Tap Tap Revenge, for example, will eventually link in to Twinkle , Tapulous' nanoblog service and Twitter client. You'll be able to send your high scores out as Twitter posts, or within Tap Tap, see the high scores of your Twitter pals. The goal underpinning all the Tapulous apps (these two, plus new ones I'll talk about in a minute) is to provide immediate value to the first users, while at the same time offering network effect benefits as people pile on. Tapulous has managed that w ...
Anytime
Sometime in next day or so, Tapulous will announce that it has accumulated 1 million users for its free iPhone game, Tap Tap Revenge . That's an accomplishment, but what's really interesting about the company is its overall strategy, since Tapulous is not, ultimately, a games company. I met recently with Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem and COO Andrew Lacy and to learn more. The company is a social networking play. As Decrem said with glee as he demo'd the two-player version of Tap Tap Revenge with me (when you play, you and your opponent take up position on either end of an iPhone), the game is highly social. "Look how close we are," he said. If I were a 14-year-old boy playing with a girl I liked, this game would be, "the best chance to kiss her." Spin the Bottle for the iPhone generation. The social underpinnings of the company go much deeper than that, fortunately. Tapulous is building a suite of different apps that connect to each other at a social level. Tap Tap Revenge, for example, will eventually link in to Twinkle , Tapulous' nanoblog service and Twitter client. You'll be able to send your high scores out as Twitter posts, or within Tap Tap, see the high scores of your Twitter pals. The goal underpinning all the Tapulous apps (these two, plus new ones I'll talk about in a minute) is to provide immediate value to the first users, while at the same time offering network effect benefits as people pile on. Tapulous has managed that w ...