Offerpal Media, one of the companies at the center of a bitter dispute over misleading advertisements on social networks, on Thursday launched a revised policy designed to "forbid any offers that are misleading, deceptive or otherwise objectionable."
Companies like Offerpal are enlisted by many of the big gaming companies built on social networks like Facebook; they help those companies make money by letting game players earn points and virtual goods by completing offers and surveys rather than paying real money.
They make a lot of money doing so. So do the game companies, like Zynga and Playfish (recently acquired by Electronic Arts), which in turn advertise heavily on the likes of Facebook to recruit new players.
But then the negative press started to emerge: many of these "free" offers and surveys actually had hidden costs attached to them that weren't adequately disclosed. Some companies like Zynga started backtracking and going so far as to ban offers altogether. Facebook and MySpace, the two biggest social-network platforms, made very public revisions to their policies. But the controversy continued, and both Facebook and Zynga were named as defendants in a federal class-action lawsuit.
Offerpal, which replaced its CEO amid the controversy, has now come out and said that while it's setting a basic standard for advertisement quality, game makers and publishers enlisting Offerpal's services can opt to be even more stringent. "Offerpal will rate all offers by quality and allow its partners to select a quality level of compliance ranging from 'Level 1' for minimal restrictions to 'Level 5' for highly conservative restrictions," a release explained.
Will the new restrictions keep angry bloggers and consumers--not to mention lawmakers--at bay? More importantly, are they going to amount to anything more than smoke and mirrors? We'll see.
It looks like the brouhaha surrounding social-app moneymaker Offerpal Media is bigger than founder Anu Shukla's "sh*t, double sh*t, and bullsh*t" response to the accusation that its business is built on scamming consumers. It's got upcoming developments in two lawsuits, one in which it's the plaintiff and one in which Shukla is a defendant.
VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi reported Thursday that a lawsuit was filed in an Alameda County, Calif., superior court against Shukla and co-founder Michael Liu on behalf of Kevin Halpern, who alleges that he helped found the company and was then shut out. In a court complaint, Halpert says that in exchange for offering his social-networking expertise to what would become Offerpal, Shukla promised him a 15 to 20 percent stake in the company that never came to fruition.
The defendant's motion to dismiss the breach-of-contract suit is scheduled for November 24, according to public court documents. On Wednesday, Offerpal had announced that Shukla would be leaving her post as CEO and would be replaced by digital-ad veteran George Garrick.
But that's not the only legal dispute that Offerpal is in. There's a judicial settlement conference scheduled for Friday in the trademark infringement lawsuit that Offerpal filed against Kickflip, a former customer that went on to create a competing business, called Gambit, according to a person familiar with the court details. The suit was originally filed in April, and the status of a potential settlement is currently unclear because most of the events thus far, as well as Friday's scheduled meeting, have been behind closed doors.
But the reason why Offerpal has been in the news so much as of late has been because of Shukla's public altercation with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington at last month's Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco. In response to Arrington's allegations that Offerpal's profitable business, used by many social-gaming companies as a way for users to earn virtual goods in-game, actually misleads players into signing up for paid offers and subscriptions.
Following the Arrington-Shukla spat, a number of high-profile names in the gaming and social-networking world came out against developer-app scams and misleading ads. Offerpal maintains that it runs a legitimate business. But it's clear that this company's issues run quite a bit deeper than a single PR fiasco.
Offerpal Media, a company that helps social-network app creators make money from offers and surveys, on Tuesday announced that it had replaced its CEO in the wake of a high-profile onstage argument at a conference and subsequent press over whether it's scamming consumers who fill out offers in order to earn virtual goods in social games.
Anu Shukla, who founded the company and had been serving as CEO since its 2007 launch, will be replaced by George Garrick, who has served as the CEO of Flycast Communications, Wine.com, Jingle Networks, and Mochi Media. Shukla "will still be involved and help guide the company," an Offerpal representative told CNET News.
A statement from Shukla makes it sound like the company's been CEO-hunting for months ("I have known George for a long time...After many months of searching, I believe that George is the best CEO to scale the company to new heights. I am looking forward to working with him closely"). But the timing is a little too good to be coincidental: a firestorm erupted over Offerpal and other companies in its niche after TechCrunch's Michael Arrington confronted Shukla while she was on a panel at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco last month. Arrington accused Shukla of running a scam operation that tricks consumers into unwittingly spending money--and of course, he then blogged about it.
Shukla's response to Arrington was "sh*t, double sh*t, and bullsh*t."
But the industry has taken the controversy seriously. Social game makers like the massive Zynga have come out and said that they would ban potentially shady and misleading offers, even though those might make up a sizeable chunk of revenue, and on Tuesday social network MySpace joined the debate and said that it had modified its terms of service to outlaw "app scams."
Shukla was interviewed by VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi in a lengthy article published on Tuesday.
This post was expanded at 4:55 p.m. PT.
Message Systems, a company that offers message management platforms for carriers and ISPs, announced the launch of its first message management service that "combats the transmission of illegal and inappropriate images sent via email and wireless messaging." According to the company, the tool will use image recognition software developed by Image Analyzer to provide ISPs and mobile carriers with better knowledge about what's being transmitted over their networks.
Detecting illegal and illicit images has been difficult for ISPs and mobile carriers, Message Systems said in a statement. But with the help of Image Analyzer's technology, ISPs and carriers will have "real-time image analysis" at their disposal that will allow them to distinguish between inappropriate and appropriate content. The tool can be integrated directly into an ISP's or carrier's existing messaging system.
Quickoffice, a provider of mobile office software, announced Tuesday that it has released its first Microsoft Office viewer for Google's Android platform. Dubbed Quickoffice for Android, the app will allow T-Mobile G1 users to access, view, and manage their Word and Excel files. The software costs $7.99 and is available now.
Offerpal Media, a company that provides in-game offers and surveys to help developers monetize their online games, has secured a $15 million in a Series B round of funding that was led by D.E. Shaw Ventures, The New York Times is reporting. According to the company, it has over 2,000 advertisers in its system and adds 100 new offers each week. It plans to use the funding to expand its services to other developers.
Career search site, Indeed released a new feature Tuesday, called Industry Trends, which provides a visual look at job seeker trends in 12 major industries, including accounting, finance, and retail. The company found that the number of job listings has declined over the past year, but job-seeker traffic is up over the past 12 months.
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