The social gaming gold rush continues with the news that Playdom has raised $43 million of investment in its Series A funding round.

The investment, led by New Enterprise Associates, along with Playdom chairman Rick Thompson, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, will be used to finance strategic acquisitions and expand the company's pipeline of market-leading games.

"We are focused on growing Playdom into a world-class gaming company. A number of compelling games are in development for 2010, and we're bullish about our future and the potential to bring people together through social gaming," said John Pleasants, Playdom CEO.

"Social games appeal to everyone, everywhere. Our players range from ages 13 to 80 and come from more than 150 countries, so the opportunity for growth is tremendous."

Playdom currently runs 13 games on social networking platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and iPhone and boasts 28 million monthly active users.

Playdom's initial success came with MySpace games but it's since expanded its reach, and claims two of the top five role-playing games on Facebook, including Sorority Life and Mobsters 2: Vendetta.

It released a cross-platform iPhone version of  its popular Mobsters game, called Mobsters: Big Apple in July 2009, which enables users to play the same game account via iPhone or MySpace.

The ability to use the freemium pay-to-play model for iPhone games is sure to see more Playdom activity on the App Store in future too.

Playdom has over 190 employees in offices in Mountain View and San Francisco, CA, as well as a game studio in Eugene, OR.