San Francisco-based Bionic Panda Games, a mobile games startup focused on casual social games for the Android platform, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from a wide syndicate of investors. Participants in the financing include SoftTech VC, Norwest Venture Partners, Google Ventures, 500 Startups, and angels Craig Sherman and Kal Vepuri. Charles Hudson, who [...]

Yesterday, it came to light that a San Francisco-based freelance writer used the peer-to-peer vacation rental Website Airbnb to disastrous effect last month.  Among other damage to her apartment were smashed doors, stolen family heirlooms, and guest sheets turned to ash in the fireplace. The injury to Airbnb’s reputation may prove extensive, given the image it [...]

Earlier this week, research firm Inside Network published a fascinating new report that looks at the spending and usage patterns of the users who are driving the success of hugely profitable social games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Texas Hold’Em.

This afternoon, I caught up with one of the report’s coauthors, Charles Hudson, to gather a little more detail about that study — and what he found most surprising about its findings.

How many people did you interview for your research and how did you find them?

Going into it, we talked to a lot of developers about what tools they were using for customer acquisition. It turns out