With nerds and Twitter behind me I will rule the world

From right to left, Sutter Hill Ventures's Greg Sands, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Barack Obama, Pincus's new wife Alison Gelb Pincus, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and "the girlfriend," Eileen Whelply. We know you can do better, so crack wise in the comments and we'll make the best one the new title. Friday's winner was sample032 for "Who killed my electric car?" (And not just because he showed up to the happy hour in Mountain View.) (Photo by Steve Jurvetson)

Kleiner Perkins plunges into Web 2.0 far too late with Zynga's $29 million round

Today at Facebook's developer's conference, social games widgetmaker Zynga will announce a $29 million round of funding — the company's second — led by Kleiner Perkins, the VC firm that backed Amazon.com and Google. Zynga has also acquired virtual world app YoVille and added former Electronic Arts creative exec Bing Gordon to its board. The company makes games like Poker and Attack, a Risk clone, for Facebook and other social networks. Zynga founder Mark Pincus told the Wall Street Journal that Zynga has 18 million monthly visitors and adds another 450,000 users a day. Kleiner Perkins partner John Doeer said his firm went ahead with the Zynga deal because of that kind of growth, telling the Journal Zynga has "cracked the code" on how to develop games that go viral fast. But really, how Zynga adds new users isn't all that complicated, clever or sustainable. More »

Hyped widgetmaker explains the widgetmaker hype

Union Square Ventures funded Mark Pincus's casual games maker Zynga with $10 million not long after Max Levchin-founded widgetmaker Slide raised $50 million. Competitor RockYou wants a round of funding that would value it at $400 million. We like to scoff at these purveyors of online sheep-throwing tools, but that's serious scratch, people. In this excerpt from a longer interview with Kara Swisher, Zynga's Mark Pincus explains what widgetmakers see in our future — and shows us exactly what kind of pitch VCs are going for these days.

Mark Pincus licks, bites hand that feeds him

Failed social networking entrepreneur Mark Pincus, the force that brought the Internet both Tribe.net and Acebucks, now hopes to dominate the Facebook application market with his new casual games company Zynga. He claims he hasn't touched his $10 million in VC funding because he's in the lucrative business of selling application referrals within Zynga's Facebook games — a pyramid scheme if there ever was one. More »

VCs sink big money into spammy Facebook games

The first gold-rush miners to make any money during the 1840s were the ones who stopped digging and started selling shovels, according to Timesman Brad Stone. Today a similar operation from Mark Pincus, Tribe.net founder and early Facebook investor, announced $10 million in funding from Union Square Ventures, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Bob Pittman. More »

A loyalty program without much mileage

According to Mike Lazerow, the founder of Buddy Media, creator of Facebook application AceBucks, his company's virtual-currency service is just misunderstood. The "boo birds" just don't get it. Lazerow & Co. aren't competing with PayPal, Facebook's own rumored micropayment system, Beenz, or Flooz. Acebucks is not a payment processor and its not an online currency that translates into real goods or real money. So what the hell is it? It's a "loyalty program." In other words, it's a frequent-flier program — without the free plane trips, though. Remind us why Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus, Howard Lindzon, and other net bigwigs invested $1.5 million in this company?

Acebucks, the developers of a virtual currency for social network Facebook, has raised real cash — $1.5 million — from a group of uberinvestors — Wallstrip's Howard Lindzon, Facebook board member Peter Thiel, Tribe.net founder Mark Pincus, among others. Why? Because virtual currencies like Flooz, Beenz, and several other Web currencies proved so successful, we're sure. [All Facebook]

Mark Pincus finds his match

We should have known that dot-com wonderboy Mark Pincus was maturing when he sold Tribe, his social network for Burning Man attendees, to Cisco earlier this year. After a few months cavorting around Aspen and partying with movie stars, he's settled down and gotten engaged to girlfriend Alison Gelb, who works at magazine publisher Hachette Filipacchi and whom a friend describes as "a huge prize" for Pincus. As for Pincus? Not so much of a prize. Ever the romantic, Pincus gallantly waited for Gelb to recover from a momentary illness before popping the question. More »

Mark Pincus, Tribe cofounder, notes that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is becoming a fashion influencer. "At fb app dev meeting. Can't help noticing 4 guys in the room in flip flops." [Mark Pincus Blog]

Loose Wires: Woz pops a wheelie

• Blogger Michael Arrington holds his New York City TechCrunch party at BED, the bar/restaurant furnished with beds instead of couches, once featured on Sex in the City. One Yelp reviewer says, "It's a definite must for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd." Expect plenty of confusion as the selective bouncers reject Arrington's more unfashionable guests. [TechCrunch]
• Meanwhile, Arrington keeps collecting blog enemies, including Paul Stamatiou, who puts Arrington at the top of his list of insufferably ignorant bloggers with undeserved fame. [Drums n Whistles, Paul Stamatiou]
• How do startup founders prepare for fawning profiles in the mainstream press? By getting fawning profiles in the college press. Most ridiculously laudatory line: "Gregarious and not exactly shy, Afrooz has already assembled a respectable number of Facebook friends at Berkeley, despite living off campus." [UC Berkeley News]
• MySpace gets ready to scrub copyrighted music from the site — not such a big deal since every band puts its own music up there anyway. [Reuters]
• Tribe.net founder Mark Pincus gets an e-mail from the head of yesnomaybe.com. The new dating site begs the males dominating its user base to sign up their hot female friends. As Mark notes, what a lame plan — and free premium accounts for women is a sure sign of a lousy dating site. [Mark Pincus]
• A Forbes writer brilliantly spins the plague of awful startup names (Pluggd, Gabbr, Wufoo) as a sign of prudent spending — these unregistered domains cost their new owners about eight bucks a pop, instead of the $10,000 demanded for URLs like plugged.com. [Forbes]
• Local video blog Geek Entertainment TV interviews Apple co-founder and Segway enthusiast Steve Wozniak about the company's recent recall. [GETV]

Tribal war: Tribe founder vs. the Washington Post

Aw man, some shit's going down between blogger Mark Pincus and the Washington Post, and the Tribe.net founder tried to turn it into a story of Old vs. New Media. More »

Just you watch for it: Tribe's changing today, honest

We live in a Time Of Changes — little changes, sure, but still. Changes. Here are three. Um, of those. Of those changes. The little changes. More »

The Tribe has spoken: Where Mark Pincus's company is going

Guest feature by Beth Gottfried More »

Tribe to return to hippie paradise

Now that the news of his takeover is out, Tribe founder Mark Pincus shares with the blog SiliconBeat his plans, now that he's back at the helm. More »

Tribe update #1: Yes, Virginia, there is a takeover.

The news is all over the Internets about Mark Pincus taking over Tribe. The social site's co-founder hasn't yet updated his bio (it still reads "former CEO"), but he announced his takeover on Tribe. More »

Holy shit, Mark Pincus saves Tribe!

Hey, remember that hippie-filled social network, Tribe, from the Friendster days? Founder Mark Pincus just took it over, proving that sometimes, an ex-CEO can fire his replacement and wrest back control of a company. More »

Remainders: Your alter ego is named "Kind of a dick"

• You can make yourself famous by programming at a social network. [Craigslist]
• But you can make yourself more famous by not programming at all. [Steve Yegge]
• Six Apart is censoring Tribe.net founder Mark Pincus, who uses their TypePad service. [Mark Pincus]
• Whizzr, hoflickr, and mulletbook: three dot-com mashups the world never asked for. [Dead 2.0]
• It's true, Gillmor Gang podcast host Steve Gillmor core-dumped spicey details of his career to me off the record. That's why I need you to guess what he said and report it, so I can print that. [Steve Gillmor's Inforouter]
• Sorry, kids, no more free iPods in return for selling out your friends. [Bad Mark]
• Half a million bank workers protest outsourcing. Why is this funny? Click through. [Financial Times]
• BBC techie Ben Metcalfe says it's okay that he scandalized his employer — it was his alter ego "dotBen" that did it. Wow, I want an alter ego too! Mine is named Bonecrusher! What's yours? [Ben Metcalfe]
• The bookie BetUS.com handicaps the race for Top Technorati-linked Blog. [BetUS]