The deal is reportedly worth $182 million with more companies on the way.
Techcrunch is reporting that Google will announce the purchase of social gaming site Slide on Friday. The deal would add to Google’s Social war chest a big name in social gaming. Google is a big investor in the leader in this space, Zynga.
The ongoing thought is that Google (GOOG) plans to introduce a Facebook competitor called ‘Google Me’, though Google CEO Eric Schmidt says there is no reason for Google to do the same thing as Facebook.
Max Levchin, Slide’s CEO, is one of the founders of PayPal and sits on the boards of a few other Silicon Valley companies.
Interestingly, SAI points us to a Businessweek article from 2007:
If Slide cashes out for $1.5 billion, Levchin “would regard it as abject failure,” [Slide investor David Weiden of Khosla Ventures] says.
That’s about 10 times what Google paid for it. SAI says the deal was closer to $228 million…still not an incredible return on the rumored $78 million in total venture capital it received.
As one of the pioneer app developers on popular social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, Slide has become the world’s leading community-driven entertainment company. We offer millions of people worldwide the ability to engage, communicate and socialize with one another through our portfolio of fun apps and virtual communities including SuperPoke! Pets, Top Fish, SPP Ranch and SuperPocus Academy of Magic. Our users can create their own masterpieces with virtual jellybeans, care for their online pets, or send virtual gifts to all of their friends.
As we look at the future of social entertainment, Slide’s vision is to build communities that fuel the creation and distribution of virtual goods—a market that is forecasted to hit at least $1.6 billion in the U.S. this year.
Some of Slide’s games are pictured below.
(by the way, I hate Facebook games)
