Disney goes dancing

Tapulous has been acquired by Disney. The iPhone gaming startup with several hits on its hands was founded by Bart Decrem, who will join Disney as a VP. COO Andrew Lacy is also joining Disney as a VP. Disney is very interested in social and mobile gaming, having recently invested in Playdom’s $33 million round.

Tapulous is a hot iPhone gaming startup which has raised only $1.8 million from angel investors including Marc Benioff, Jeff Clavier, and Andy Bechtolsheim. Legendary Silicon Valley mentor and Stanford professor Rajeev Motwani, who passed away last year, was also an investor. Its flagship game, Tap Tap Revenge, has numerous versions which have been downloaded millions of times. The basic game, which lets players tap to the rhythm of songs with their fingers is free, but players must pay for new songs. Its latest game is Tap Tap Radiation for the iPad.

Tapulous’ music-oriented games appeal to a younger crowd in particular. The company puts out versions of Tap Tap Revenge featuring the songs of specific artists such as Justin Bieber Revenge, Lady Gaga Revenge, Nickelback Revenge, and Nine Inch Nails Revenge. Its other mobile music, Riddim Ribbon is also a hit.

Disney Interactive Studios sells a slew of video games built around Disney movies and characters such as Toy Story, Cars, and Hannah Montana. Most of these games are for consoles like the Xbox, PS3, or GameBoy. Buying Tapulous gets it into the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad gaming platform and gives it a strong presence in music-related games.

(More details coming)

CrunchBase Information

The Walt Disney Company

Tapulous

Xbox

iPhone

Information provided by CrunchBase

Disney buys the first official promoted trending topic

Since April, Twitter users have grown accustomed to Twitter’s first ad revenue play: Promoted Tweets. Today, the second phase of that strategy is starting to be tested: Promoted Trending Topics. The first such topic? Toy Story 3, promoted by Disney/Pixar.

As you can see in the right hand toolbar of Twitter.com, at the bottom of the Trending Topics area there is now an 11th topic, “Toy Story 3.” Next to it is a big yellow box letting you know that it’s a promoted Trending Topic. Just as with Promoted Tweets, the functionality for these Promoted Trending Topics is the same as the regular Trending Topics — clicking on it takes you to a search results page to see what people are saying about Toy Story 3.

“As we have always said, we plan to test different advertising and promotional models in these early stages of our monetization efforts for both user and brand value. As part of this effort, we are testing trends clearly marked as “promoted” for an undefined period of time,” a Twitter representative tells us.

And along with buying the Trending Topic, Disney/Pixar gets a Promoted Tweet at the top of the stream, Twitter confirms. Twitter also says that just as with Promoted Tweets, the Promoted Trending Topic “has to resonate” or it will disappear.
Two more things of note here. First, it’s interesting that Twitter is putting these at the bottom of Trending Topics rather than at the top. Still, the yellow badge draws your eye naturally to it. Second, the Promoted Trending Topic appears no matter which city or country you set your Trending Topics to. In the future, you can imagine these Promoted Tending Topics being even more highly targeted to just certain regions/cities.

CrunchBase Information

Twitter

Disney Channel

Pixar

Information provided by CrunchBase

Toontown search launched

Toontownsearch a new search engine that lets you search "All things Toontown" Has gone live. It is a search made by Uhhmm and Disney and is designed to search videos and web pages that have to do with Toontown online. Heres a video to show you how to use it.

Uhhmm to Google: WE CAN MAKE GOOD PARTNERSHIPS TO!!

Update: They let us use the Toontown search (Shown in picture below) search since we already new about it its very fast and god the video search thought... that is just amazing. We are however not allowed to post photos of the site. Sorry

(Rumor) The small USA large German search engine Uhhmm has had rumors leak out of its staff that Uhhmm and Disney's game section have come to a partnership and are creating a search engine designed to focus on each of these games. Toontown online, Club Penguin, Pixie Hallow, and other games such as those this is not confirmed but we have confirmed that the search is being built by Uhhmm at lest because our source gave us this photo.We know its hard to see but trust us its what it shorta looks like. So Uhhmm comes out with a msuic AND lyrics search that is realesed the day before the buying of Admob by Google and a week or two after Googles music search reales plus this new search do we smell a rivalry gonig on here?