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PlayPhone acquires marketing firm Social Hour for $51.5 million in stock

Cross promotion the focus

PlayPhone acquires marketing firm Social Hour for $51.5 million in stock
Social mobile platform PlayPhone has acquired marketing specialist SocialHour for $51.5 million in stock.

The non-cash purchase is designed to bolster the firm's Social Gaming Network as it looks to take on GREE and DeNA, with the firm's expertise to be employed in delivering incentivised and non-incentivised cross promotion tools for games on the network.

In all, 22 members of the SocialHour team will join PlayPhone as a result of the deal.

Marketing might

For PlayPhone CEO Ron Czerny, the move is a logical step for the network.

"We've been following SocialHour for a while, and they have a very sophisticated program for marketing and lead generation on mobile devices," said Czerny, of the deal.

PlayPhone's platform, which recently expanded from its base on iOS, Android, HTML5 and Adobe Air to Windows Phone, boasts more than 35 million registered users according to stats released by the firm back in December.

That puts it behind Japanese platform GREE – itself due to relaunch its operations in the west in Q2 2012 – which has 130 million users on its network as of August 2011, while DeNA's platform boasts more than 35 million users in Japan alone.

[source: VentureBeat]

With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font.