Booyah - Play MyTown! Booyah (Booyah) Why MyTown Is Bigger Than Foursquare & Gowalla – GigaOM. Location-based social networking services like Foursquare and Gowalla may eat up a lot of techie mindshare, but they still have very few users — roughly 150,000 and 50,000, respectively. However, by virtue of product design and social norms, users are discouraged from cheating when it comes to the services’ social gaming elements, so the value of their information is high. On the other hand, an iPhone app called MyTown, which also features a location-based check-in system game, acquired 250,000 users within just two weeks of launching earlier this month. The app already gets 650,000 daily check-ins from nearly 1 million locations.
The difference? MyTown is much more of a game. In the span of 20 minutes or so, I “checked in” at tens of locations in my neighborhood, acquired points and virtual cash and bonuses, “bought” (à la Monopoly) nearby restaurants and collected rent on them, and got up to level six of 20 — all from the comfort of my couch. The game is really, really easy.
MyTown - iPhone Apps | i[App]Phone. Booyah's iPhone game MyTown turns. Augmented reality is the new buzzword when it comes to linking the real world and virtual world in a way that both high street businesses and software developers can leverage technology to engage new customers. But developer Booyah is still making use of more basic GPS systems to bring users into physical locations through a new iPhone game called MyTown. "We want to blur real and virtual worlds - youre navigating the real world by checking out pizza places, leaving comments for other people, and youre also competing with friends with points and on a leaderboard," Booyah CEO and co-founder Keith Lee tells VentureBeat. "There are a couple startups that get press, but no one has become the de facto leader in the space.
"MyTown turns real-world locations into something of a Monopoly board, allowing players to buy locations in their immediate area, earn money from them and expand them, while gathering extras from actually visiting the place in person. Booyah's Keith Lee on moving from World of Warcraft to iPhone, i. One of the most interesting, and well funded, start-ups to enter the iPhone space in 2009 is US outfit Booyah. Formed by three former Blizzard staff who've previously worked on games such as World of Warcraft and Diablo III, its first release is the free Booyah Society which launched at the end of July 2009. The app works in the form of a journal in which you enter your thoughts and gain achievements for doing so. You can also view the thoughts of other players, and link it into your Facebook and Twitter accounts. We caught up with CEO Keith Lee to find out about the company's inspiration and its longterm vision. Pocket Gamer: How relevant do you think your experience with traditional games and MMOGs is in terms of Booyah Society?
Keith Lee: In terms of our long term vision for Booyah, our team's past experience is very relevant. We take a very iterative approach - MMOs are constantly evolving and require flexibility in the design and development process. Thanks to Keith for his time. Booyah’s MyTown: Location-Based Gaming Meets Monopoly. Back when iPhone developer Booyah released its first title, Booyah Society, most of the buzz was about the creators behind it. With a number of the team coming from strong backgrounds such as Blizzard Entertainment, there were high expectations for the game that allowed players to “level up in life.” Unfortunately, it looks as if the game is no longer in the AppStore, as the company kicks off a new rendition: MyTown.
The game keeps some of the old features of Societies; namely the robotic-looking avatars. Users can interact with them by tapping the screen, earn items and clothing, and post updates via Twitter or Facebook. What is different, however, is that the game has gone the route of location-based game/social networks such as FourSquare and Gowalla. As a reminder, those are games that have users “checking in” from real locations around their town to earn points.
This is where the game starts to feel like a real-life Monopoly. TechCrunch: Booyah! MyTown hits 1 mill... MyTown Adds Product Check-ins. MyTown- the Monopoly-like iPhone app with 2.5 million users – parent company Booyah is working hard to ground itself more firmly into the real world. Among other updates in its version 4.1.1 app which is optimized for iOS 4, MyTown users can now earn points and possible real-world rewards by checking into products by scanning the item’s barcode with their iPhone cameras. This is a very smart and forward thinking move on Booyah’s part, and positions the app very well for the geo-focused future that we believe Apple is preparing for iOS and the iPhone. In a way, this integration brings to mind Get Glue’s iPhone app, which lets you “check-in” so to speak to various media, including movies, books and TV shows.
First, it allows Booyah to gain more geo-located info. Second, when the user checks into the product this allows Booyah relay offers from the product maker as well as possibly the store the product is in, or even related products or related stores. Thumb image. Booyah’s MyTown Goes Global. MyTown hits 350k product check-ins per week. Reveals new corporate partnerships. MyTown, from Booyah! Which recently added product check-ins to its wildly popular service, has today announced another milestone, 350,000 product check-ins per week and some new corporate partnerships that should make the service even more widely adopted.
For those unfamiliar with the iPhone and iPod touch app, MyTown uses GPS features to check-in at real-world locations to unlock rewards. Players can buy and upgrade shops, enjoying MyTown ownership of their favorite real-life places. Users can also collect rent when other people check-in to their shops. MyTown, has over 2.8 million active users, closely trailed by Foursquare, which recently announced that it has hit the 2.6 million user mark, is upping the ante with an announcement via Twitter today regarding numbers of product check-ins per week and new partnerships with haircare line Pantene and discount fashion chain, H&M. According to the blog post from Booyah!