Eric David
Latest from Eric David
Facebook’s LiveRail platform will expand advertisers’ access to user data
Very few companies can claim to match anything close to the level of data Facebook has on its 1.4 billion users. In fact, Facebook’s total user base accounts for nearly half of the entire world’s Internet using population, and with advertisers scrambling for any possible advantage in reaching potential customers, Facebook’s wealth of user information is perhaps the company’s greatest ...
Northern Ireland gives out free copies of Minecraft to all secondary schools
Even among its early adopters, few could have imagined the powerhouse phenomenon Minecraft would become, eventually leading to its developer, Mojang AB, being bought for $2 billion by Microsoft Corp. While plenty of players can zone out for hours on the game as they build their own worlds, Minecraft has also been praised for fostering creativity and analytical ...
Build games in a remote cabin with a Swedish accelerator and its top game dev mentors
While Japanese and American game developers such as Nintendo and Electronic Arts have largely dominated the video game industry for most of its short history, there are some interesting things happening in Europe now. There are highly profitable studios like Clash of Heroes creator Supercell, as well as critically acclaimed studios with cult followings such as Polish developer ...
YouTube reportedly going after Twitch by rebranding its live service
Last year, Google Inc. tried and failed to purchase the popular video game livestreaming service Twitch.tv, and the site ultimately went to Amazon Inc. for a $970 million deal. Now, Google is fighting back by reportedly spinning its own livestreaming service on YouTube to have a heavier focus on games and esports, which continue to have one of ...
Facebook’s “On This Day” ads Timehop-like features to the site
If you can’t beat them, clone them. That seems to be Facebook’s motto anyway, as the social media giant bakes in more features that originally became popular through third-party apps. The latest addition to Facebook is “On This Day,” a time capsule tool that allows users to relive moments that were shared on the same ...
Clash of Clans dev Supercell tripled its earnings in 2014 thanks to F2P model
It is no surprise to learn that the company behind the popular free-to-play (F2P) mobile game Clash of Clans is doing ok—they were able to afford a several-million dollar ad starring Academy Award nominee Liam Neeson during this year’s Super Bowl after all. But Supercell, the developer behind the runaway hit, is doing far better than ok. The ...
Multi-gaming and the argument for “boring” games
Who would want to play a boring game? With the video game industry becoming more and more competitive, you might think that any gameplay that is even remotely boring would be stripped out so that only the fun parts remain, but Marcus Carter, a University of Melbourne PhD candidate, argues that seemingly boring mechanics have created a new ...
Facebook may soon host news content for New York Times and others
Facebook has long been positioning itself as a personalized newspaper for its users — it is even right there in the name “News Feed.” Now, the social networking giant might be taking that claim a bit more literally by getting into the real news publishing industry. Facebook has reportedly been in discussions with the New York ...
Instagram introduces a collage-building app called Layout
If you were tired of people complaining about the flood of Instagram pictures using one of the app’s many different filters, get ready for a new trend to take over your Facebook and Twitter feeds. Today the Facebook Inc-owned Instagram announced a new app called Layout that will allow users to quickly generate single image collages ...
Twitch warns users of possible hack, all passwords and stream keys reset
Popular livestreaming service Twitch.tv has confirmed that a number of user accounts may have been compromised, forcing the site to reset thousands of passwords and automatically expiring stream keys on the network. Twitch is currently requiring returning users to reset their password when logging back into the site. Twitch wrote on its official blog: We are writing ...