Social Gaming Network (SGN) Announces Additional Investment From Bezos Expeditions
PALO ALTO, CA--(MARKET WIRE)--Jul 14, 2008 -- Social Gaming Network (SGN), the leading global development platform for social game distribution, announced today that Bezos Expeditions has invested in the company for an undisclosed amount. Bezos Expeditions is the personal investment fund of Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com.
"We are proud to be announcing the Bezos Expeditions investment," said Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN. "Mr. Bezos' knowledge and experience lends itself to the growth and expansion of the social gaming ecosystem. His participation in our funding will allow us to continue capturing new demographics in gaming by distributing the highest quality games available on the social web."
"SGN has the expertise to bring gaming into entirely new markets," says Steve Campbell, CIO of Bezos Expeditions. "There's an obvious benefit to gaining such deep traction in the social networking area."
SGN provides developers with a distribution platform and audience access that gives them maximum monetization opportunities through advertising and virtual goods. As game-play technology advances, developers on the SGN network are creating rich social gaming experiences and innovative ways to share and compete. SGN is poised to capitalize on network effects by leveraging recommendation engines that connect users to games they will enjoy and to like-minded players.
In May 2008 SGN announced a $15 million Series A round led by Greylock Partners and Founders Fund. As a fellow investor in SGN, Greylock Partners' David Sze today said, "SGN is a force to be reckoned with in the gaming space. We are looking forward to Bezos Expeditions joining the SGN investors group."
About SGN:
Social Gaming Network (SGN) is the leading global development platform for social game distribution. SGN has created a complete ecosystem for social game developers to easily distribute and monetize their games across the social web. These games transcend traditional game play, by giving players a highly personalized, engaging, competitive, and portable user experience. Since its inception, SGN's games have attracted over 1 billion page views, 54 million installs and nearly 1.1 million daily active users across Facebook, Bebo, hi5, and MySpace. Popular titles include Warbook, FightClub, StreetRace, Jetman, and Free Gifts. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, SGN is funded by Bezos Expeditions, Columbia Capital, Founders Fund, Greylock Partners and Novak Biddle Venture Partners. For a complete list of available tiles, developer and publisher information, please visit www.sgn.com.
About Bezos Expeditions:
Led by Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com, and Chief Investment Officer Stephen Campbell, Bezos Expeditions manages Jeff Bezos' personal venture capital investments. Bezos Expeditions has made a number of strategic investments in disruptive technology startups, starting with a $14M investment in MFG.com in 2005. The Bezos portfolio includes investments in Pelago, Twitter, Kongregate, TeachStreet, Powerset (acquired by Microsoft), ChaCha and 37signals, with a total fund value of nearly $70M.