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The Social Times covers news, analysis and insight pertaining to the social web. Learn how to brand yourself and your company via the social web.

Bigpoint Launches Seafight on hi5 Game ChannelJuly 1

Online game portal Bigpoint is launching a game called Seafight on hi5’s recently revealed Games Channel, making it immediately available in 20 languages. Play the game on hi5 here.

The realtime fantasy adventure game is among Bigpoint’s most popular. The Flash game will be made accessible for all hi5 users without having to install a seperate application. So far the supported launguages are English, German, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Potuguese, Romanian, Russina, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Seafight is the lastest in a growing string of games included on hi5 and integrated with the social network’s own virtual currency. Having yet another popular game with which to apply the hi5 Coins is a revenue-generating strategy that both hi5 and Bigpoint can take advantage of. It’s a necessary shift in payment options, considering the platform approach hi5 is taking to its own growing virtual economy.

And it makes things a great deal easier for end users, especially if they’re given a certain amount of money from their parents with which to spend in a given environment. The conversion to virtual currency means that parents and users have more control ove

Meebo Ramps Up Ads with New Partner NetworkJune 30

Meebo, the chat widget tool, had already launched its own ad network some time ago. Now the company is launching ads on its own partner network, with Toyota being the first marketer to advertise. With 85 publishers signed up for its partner network, Meebo is enabling brands to run ads on a larger scale directly through Meebo’s company, with the same results they’ve grown accustomed to on Meebo.com.

What’s this really mean? In Meebo’s long-standing effort to expand its own network, web presence and visibility, the integrated communication tool has launched several tools and gained several partners, many of which have teamed up with the company for marketing purposes. This is in part due to the fact that Meebo’s integrated communication tools enable brands to connect directly with consumers through multimedia brand messages, chat, and advertisements. On the consumer end, these communication tools provide great channels for product and brand discussion as well as valuable feedback that marketers can use in their larger data pools.

This also appears to be another step towards Meebo’s larger goals of becoming a mainstay and standard in the way of web communication, especially when it comes to enterprise and advertising purposes for social media integration. In the past few weeks Meebo launched an

Invites for TwiFeedback, in 140 Characters or Less.June 30

Twitter can be a great way to gain feedback from customers, clients and consumers of your product or service, as many brands like Comcast are well aware. But if you’re looking fr a more direct and dedicated way to leverage the Twitter community for brand feedback purposes, a new tool called TwitFeedback is looking to make it drop-dead simple for you to do so.

Managed through a widget, visitors to your website can say in 140 characters what they think of your product or service. If the concept of garnering feedback directly from your site sounds familiar because of a certain side tab that became popular, you’ll be happy to know that TwiFeedback uses a similar tab that appears on your website. Non intrusive but inviting nonetheless, clicking on this tab will open up the TwiFeedback widget.

The widget invites users to leave their feedback via a tweet, which comes pre-populated with your corresponding Twitter username and a respective hashtag at the start of the tweet. Once a site visitor types in their tweet, they’ll be redirected to their Twitter homepage where they can hit send. Now they’ve created a tweet and you have more brand-related fodder to go along with your Twitter community. In terms of this Twitter community, the related tweets that others have left in regards

Offerpal Teams with Tapjoy for iPhone App MonetizationJune 29

What could make iPhone app development and monetization a more seamless operation? Combining the two to create a one-stop-chop-shop. Offerpal Media has partnered with Tapjoy to present such an offering. As part of Tapjoy’s Software Developer Kit for iPhone apps, developers can choose to optimize monetization options through Offerpal Media. It’s a package deal that covers some of the most important bases for iPhone app developers.

For Tapjoy, the inclusion of Offerpal’s monetization platform means that the company can offer a range of new features for its own clients. This holds especially true as Tapjoy already benefited from creating package deals that encompass advertising and monetization options through companies such as Google. As a core focus for Tapjoy’s SDK is to enable developers to profit from their iPhone apps, broadening options towards this end is in the best interest of Tapjoy.

Offerpal Media has extended its services to the iPhone earlier this year, and in an effort to make itself more accessible to a wide array of iPhone developers, Offerpal has teamed with an established SDK provider. A similar tactic was used by Offerpal in other areas of virtual goods monetization, as the company teamed with IMVU this year as well.

This is the latest in a string of announcements from Offerpal Media, which has been aggressively

Motorola Karma is Socially Aware. Groovy.June 25

AT&T’s 3G network is being used for yet another socially savvy mobile device; the upcoming Moterolla Karma QA1 is curvy, compact and socially aware. The phone will have quick access to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, JuiceCaster and more. From Motorola’s perspective, the idea of a mobile device is to support communication, no matter how it occurs.

That’s a good point of view to have, considering the dominance of Apple’s iPhone, and the multimedia support mobile devices need for creating, sharing and consuming content. With what appears to be a main tab for social networking, a menu of socially integrated applications are ready and able to connect you with your web world.

It’s a concept that hasn’t been lost in the past few years, only catalyzed thanks to leaps made by Apple and other companies such as Nokia. With furthered support frm the device makers themselves, it’s becoming infinitely easier for social networks to lobby for prominent placement on mobile devices.

The same once rang true for computer desktops, where a pre-installed application could catapult a software company into fortune and fame. Over the past few years we’ve seen several steps taken on the sides of device makers, social network owners and mobile network providers to offer socially aware services that will ultimately benefit consumers.

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