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Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA), just announced that it acquired the developer of the hottest gaming app Draw Something.

We wrote about Draw Something last week and the domain name DrawSomething.com

According to a Press release issued minutes ago, Zynga just acquired “New York-based social game developer OMGPOP, makers of the popular cultural hit mobile game, Draw Something, and over 35 additional social games.”

“As a part of the Zynga family, OMGPOP will focus on building new mobile IP and strengthening its existing portfolio of fun and creative social games.

“The OMGPOP team has created a game that’s fun, expressive and engenders real social interaction,” said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga. “Draw Something has captured the imagination of millions of people around the world. We love the way they’ve worked playful and relevant culture into their games from Devo to Daft Punk, from Lin to Beckham. We’re honored to have the opportunity to partner with and support such an innovative team of creative inventors.”

“I want to thank our players, our fans, everyone who’s ever drawn something. You’ve made this game into something truly special. Zynga offered us a chance to focus on Draw Something – they know the power of the game and they planned with us how to let it keep rolling in the same fun, irreverent, social way that it has been. That was really important to us,” said Dan Porter, CEO of OMGPOP. “The game will stay true to you and what you love, and it’s my solemn vow that the magic of Draw Something will not change. I know without a doubt that Zynga is the right partner for OMGPOP. Our new partners at Zynga know how to innovate at scale, and they’re pushing the limits of social with their mobile games. With the added resources we now have, and the deep gaming experience we can draw from, we can’t wait to continue to surprise our users. If you’re a fan, a player of ours, I can’t wait to show you what’s in store – it’s going to be drawsome.”

In the six weeks since Draw Something launched, it has been downloaded over 35 million times. Draw Something’s eye-popping stats include:

·         In the last week, more than 1 billion drawings have been created.
·         Draw Something had three drawings per second the day the game launched.
·         Yesterday, Draw Something has over 3,000 drawings per second at its peak.…

There was an interesting press release from MarketPage a system that “allows anyone to have a shop on their Facebook Page and invite others to sell there.”

Its seems like a natural.

You have a fanbase that wants to connect with you and you allow people to sell merchandise on your page your fans would be interested in.

The first one out of the block is none other than Snoop Dog.

Melvin Tercan, the CEO of Tinypay, Inc. the  start-up behind MarketPage is quoted as saying:

“We’ve quickly discovered that it doesn’t make sense to create a shop just for your friends.”

“People seem to be coming together at Pages that promote a certain artist, brand or community and attract a lot of fans.”

“That’s the place where you want to sell.”

We’ve made it possible for all the 850 million Facebook users to create a true e-commerce community,”

MarketPage launches today as a marketplace solution for Facebook Pages and hip-hop superstar Snoop Dogg is the first to use it.

Snoop Dogg will be the first to have his merchandise for sale on his “Snooper market.”

Over 15 million of his fans on Facebook will have instant access to his MarketPage.

He has invited other merchants to sell on his page and plans to open it up for everyone in the near future.

Snoop says he’s excited to let his fans “get all their Snoop swag on.”

Tinypay the company behind Marketpage, is yet another startup using the .Me extension for its website, so they are Tinypay.me…

In a op-ed piece written by Robert M. McDowell who is a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission for the New York Times Today, Mr. McDowell warns of an international movement afoot to give take control to regulate the domain name system away from ICANN and the US and hand it over to the United Nations.

As the NYT story is by subscription only we can’t quote much from the story but we will highlight a few quotes:
“”On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet.”

“Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish “international control over the Internet” through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices”

As bad as we think ICANN is, I think we can pretty much agree that the UN would be worse.

Moreover not only would this treaty take the governance of the domain name system away form ICANN but it would seek to regulate internationally many issues and services around the internet and international mobile traffic as well

Again quoting from the piece published by the NYT:

“Russia, China and their allies within the 193 member states of the ITU want to renegotiate the 1988 treaty to expand its reach into previously unregulated areas. Reading even a partial list of proposals that could be codified into international law next December at a conference in Dubai is chilling:
• Subject cyber security and data privacy to international control;

• Allow foreign phone companies to charge fees for “international” Internet traffic, perhaps even on a “per-click” basis for certain Web destinations, with the goal of generating revenue for state-owned phone companies and government treasuries;

• Impose unprecedented economic regulations such as mandates for rates, terms and conditions for currently unregulated traffic-swapping agreements known as “peering.”

• Establish for the first time ITU dominion over important functions of multi-stakeholder Internet governance entities such as the Internet Corporation for

• Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit entity that coordinates the .com and .org Web addresses of the world;

• Subsume under intergovernmental control many functions of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society and other multi-stakeholder groups that establish the engineering and technical standards that allow the Internet to work;

• Regulate international mobile roaming rates and practices.”"

“”Any attempts to expand intergovernmental powers over the Internet—no matter how incremental or seemingly innocuous—should be turned back.…

According to digital-digest.com, The UK Government’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) seized the music blog RnBXclusive.com, and put up a message on the site threatening anyone who downloaded music from the site that the face up to 10 years in prison and a “an unlimited fine”.

Authorities have arrested the owners of the site for allegedly defrauding the music industry.

As you know when ICE seizes a domain name it puts up its logo and warning on the site

This site now says:

“SOCA has taken control of this domain name.

The individuals behind this website have been arrested for fraud.

The majority of music files that were available via this site were stolen from the artists.

If you have downloaded music using this website you may have committed a criminal offence which carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and an unlimited fine under UK law.

Not content with that, the site then displays the IP address you are using, and goes on:

SOCA has the capability to monitor and investigate you, and can inform your internet service provider of these infringements.

You may be liable for prosecution and the fact that you have received this message does not preclude you from prosecution.

As a result of illegal downloads young, emerging artists may have had their careers damaged. If you have illegally downloaded music you will have damaged the future of the music industry.”"

 …

According to Cnet.com “Google is reportedly getting ready to take on Dropbox with its own cloud-based storage service”.

“The service called Drive”….will allow users to upload photos, documents, and videos to Google servers for sharing with others and later retrieval”"

Drive, which is expected to launch in the coming months, will be free for most consumers and business, with a premium service offered for those who want to store a large amount of files, the paper reported.

The domain name Drive.com has been owned for many years under semi privavy with a Paul Ginsburg listed as Administrative contact.

The domain name Drive.com inexplicably is going and has been going to a Network Solutions holding page.  The domain does get traffic with an Alexa rank of 2.1m, and gets according to compete.com between 1K-5K per month.  Of course that was before the news that Google is going with Drive.

The domain name TheDrive.com, is owned by Marchex.

 …

According to a Press Release today Cyberplex Inc. (TSX:CX),  subsidiary, Tsavo Media  will have to repay  Yahoo! approximately $4.8 million over a reasonable time period” for sending low quality traffic to Yahoo advertisers.

“Yahoo! is retroactively charging Tsavo for what Yahoo! is now saying was actually low quality traffic, ranging back over many months during 2011.”

“While the Company and Yahoo! remain in discussions on this issue, the Company now expects that Yahoo! will enforce its decision to charge back this amount citing its right to do so pursuant to the terms of Tsavo Media’s agreement with Yahoo!.”

“Cyberplex also announced today that its President, Ted Hastings, has provided his resignation.”

According to TechCrunch.com, Tsavo Media  operates a network of roughly 300 websites and blogs which generated the traffic.

“‘The company’s network of Internet publications includes crappy websites like LumaGardening.com, ThinkFashion, TechSerious, WealthyGeek, Twirlit, DiscoverFame and KidGlue.”"…

The wildly popular Shazam App, which normally tells you what song you just heard on the radio or TV or at a bar or disco.

Today however with the Super Bowl it goes a lot further.

I used Shazam last night during the 1st NFL Honors Award show broadcast on NBC last night and instead of getting the name and artist of one of the songs played on the broadcast, I got somthing that looks very much like an App called: Super Bowl XLVI: From Indianapolis.

One of the many things you can do with the “app” is “rate the commercials” as they air.

It’s a way you can make your voice heard on Godaddy.com commercial and the Godaddy .Co commercial as they air.

During the game and some of the commercials there will be other opportunities to Shazam the Super Bowl.

Enjoy the game…

There are many who think that Apps will kill domain names.

Stories have been written on the topic,  Sessions at domain name conferences have been dedicated to the subject and we have written about it on TheDomains.com as well.

According to  Adweek.com , Seth Sternberg, CEO and founder of Meebo had a completely different point of view saying that:

“I think apps are dead in three to five years,”

“”Don’t get too used to the app for everything era. In just a few years it could be over.”

He added that:

“As the links between mobile devices and the cloud speed up, applications won’t need to be stored locally to deliver a snappy experience.”

“The cutesy, bright-colored icons (or “chicklets”) that make it easy to open different programs will stay, but the distinct underlying software will go.

Another participant in the session, Shawn Gunn, head of strategic advertising for mapping and location data company Navteq added:

“It’s very hard to understand a unique user in each one of those app environments and so your ability to monetize against them, whether it’s for advertising or other types of models, becomes a lot more difficult,”

“You have much better targeting on the Web because you can kind of persistently track a user. . . . That’s a big challenge today in mobile.”

“As developers move toward more open platforms and remove the silos,  “apps” will give way to mobile experiences that are more like the Web.”

PCWorld.com just published an article entitled the “Top 5 Major Changes Facing The Internet” in 2012.

The article starts off saying:

“2012 is poised to go down in Internet history as one of the most significant 12-month periods from both a technical and policy perspective since the late 1990′s”

Number 3 on the list is the new gTLD program that is opening up shortly on January 12th for applications.

As for the new gTLD program PCWorld writes:

“”3. Up to 1,000 new top-level domains will start being introduced.”

“”ICANN plans to launch a new program Jan. 12 to add hundreds of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as .hotel and .paris to the Internet.”"

“This controversial plan has been under discussion for six years, and it is finally scheduled to begin. ICANN’s new gTLD program represents the biggest change to the Internet’s naming system since 1998, when ICANN was formed.”

“If ICANN’s latest attempt to expand the domain name space succeeds, it could fundamentally change the way domain names are used.”

“Among the new categories of names that are expected to be approved include: internationalized domain names in non-English language scripts; geographically oriented domains for cities and regions; domain names tied to specific interests as well as domain names tied to individual companies and brands.”

Also mentioned in the top 5 is that Verisign contract to run the .com registry is up for renewal in late 2012.  However if the ICANN treats the renewal of the .com contract with Verisign the same as it did with the .net contract this year, it will be a rubber stamp.

The opinion said that the Act did not prohibit the states from accepting online lotto purchases from residents within the state.

According to the Times, In a separate request in July, Senators Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, and Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, asked the Justice Department to clarify its position on Internet gambling, seeking either to affirm that federal law prohibits gambling over the Internet or to make sure that Congress has a role in drafting any expansion of online betting.

Nevada is making a push to be the first state to allow online poker betting from within the state.

According to the Times, “”The new policy merely reverses the Justice Department’s longstanding position that all forms of online gambling are illegal in the United States.”

“It does not necessarily pave the way for national rules governing online gambling.”

We have maintained over the years, that as states seek more sources of revenue to pay the bills it seems to be inevitable that the US will soften its rules prohibiting online gambling to join most the rest of the world.