Disney is now home to more than just the Magical Kingdom. It’s now home to social gaming juggernaut “Playdom,” which has been formally acquired by Disney for a whopping $763 million.
According to a joint press release, Disney agreed to buy Playdom as a way of advancing its goal of bringing consumers its well-known stories, characters and brands in ever more engaging ways.
To be sure, it isn’t an exaggeration in the least to reference Playdom as one of the leading companies in the fast-growing business of online social gaming. Playdom engages an estimated 42 million active players each month.
All told, Disney stands to gain for the expensive purchase by strengthening its “already-robust digital gaming portfolio,” by providing consumers new ways to interact with the company on ubiquitous social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

QR codes are slowly making themselves known in mainstream applications, with a prime example being its use in a massive campaign centered around Gulf relief.
It was reported today that Facebook is likely in late-stage negotiations with “social activity” service Hot Potato for an acquisition.
I came across a new project from a company called “Lookout” today, which is launching what’s called the “App Genome Project” to identify threats and inform customers what type of data apps are accessing. The preliminary findings are pretty interesting so far.
While those tuned into the industry know good and well that innovative marketing potential exists in LBS apps like Foursquare, it’s easy to forget the audience for such apps is very small in comparison. Such is the tone of a new study published by Forrester.
On Monday, the jailbreak community claimed victory as the U.S. government unveiled new rules that, essentially, legalize the jailbreaking and unlocking of Apple’s juggernaut smartphone – the iPhone. While the decision has most widely been discussed within the context of Apple’s ubiquitous handset, it is now “legal” to unlock any mobile phone so that it can be used through multiple carriers.

