The Funware Blog @ rmbr

Last week I swung through LA, and, among other things, stopped by to visit with Jon Healey, respected writer at the LA Times, and author of the Bit Player blog at the same publication. I’ve known Jon since 2001 when he wrote about my last company, Trymedia, and our efforts to legitimize P2P filesharing. I walked through the product with Jon, and gave him a little taste of our philosophy on Funware and the market.

He wrote an entry about rmbr on the BitPlayer blog, and you can take a look at it here. It’s pretty cool!

Well, it’s not that unusual for me to speak in public, but I do have an upcoming engagement where I talk about Funware - the merger of games and utility software - as a category. Funware’s implications on Casual Games are just starting to be understood, and with the meteoric rise of apps like FaceBook, we’re just getting to the point where we know that they are taking up a ton of consumers’ leisure time. So, for the first time, the games industry finds itself in the position of having to defend itself against social web applications for consumer interest and engagement.

I posit that most in the casual games industry haven’t yet figured this out because the continued growth of casual games masks a lot of things. But, the stats are unmistakable - social apps are dominating user time spent online right now, and their numbers are growing like crazy.

I’ll share some of my data and thoughts after I’ve given the presentation at CGA Europe East: Kiev on the 19th. In the meantime, if you happen to be in Eastern Europe in mid-late October, come say hi at the CGA event!

The first group of alpha testers has begun to play with rmbr, giving us valuable feedback on this very early version of our product. So far, we’ve discovered a handful of bugs and that our friends are excited about the product.

Many of you have written us to ask to be added to the alpha, and I am truly sorry that we can’t just add you today. While it’s painful for me to ask you to be patient, I want you to know that it’s because we’re trying to ensure the best possible experience for everyone; if you know Chris and I, you’ll know that we mean it.

So, thanks for signing up for the alpha. We’ll start inviting you just as soon as we can. In the meantime, please continue to spread the good word about rmbr - we’re very excited that you’re so excited. Really.