Category: Apps

Reports have stated that the purchase of the app developer has now been made for $5.9 billion.

The tremendously popular mobile games developer behind Candy Crush Saga, King Digital, has now been acquired for a reported $5.9 billion by another developer, Activision Blizzard.

Activision Blizzard is the developer of popular video games such as Destiny and Call of Duty.

By way of this purchase, Activision Blizzard will be obtaining all the outstanding shares of King Digital for $18.00 per share, in cash. This is a premium of 20 percent over the closing price of King on October 30, the day the deal actually went through. Once this deal officially closes, it will mean that two of the top 5 top grossing mobile games in the United States (Candy Crush Saga and Candy Crush Soda Saga) will be brought together with the leading console video game franchise (Call of Duty), as well as the largest franchise in PC games (World of Warcraft).

This mobile games developer acquisition has the potential to be a highly powerful one, heading forward.

On the first trading day after the acquisition, the shares of King Digital spiked by 15 percent in pre-trading, while the shares of Activision slumped slightly by 2.6 percent. In terms of the revenues of the companies, during the 12 months that ended with the close of September, King had brought in $2.1 billion while Activision Blizzard took in $4.7 billion.

According to the CEO of Activision Blizzard, Robert Kotick, when discussing King, “They built an incredible business.” He explained that “When we think about people who create compelling content and satisfy large audiences, they’ve been brilliant at it. We thought it would make a great opportunity for us to enter a new market.”

The team of CEO of King, Riccardo Zacconi, COO Stephane Kurgan and CCO Sebastian Knuttsson will be continuing their operations of King as an independent unit of operations. Zacconi said that they will be pooling their expertise in free to play mobile games with the world-class brands at Activision Blizzard, a company that already has a solid history of building and sustaining some of the top video gaming franchises.

The “favorites” that had previously been represented by a star icon are now heart shaped “likes”

Twitter has been undergoing a number of changes – some larger than other – in order to boost its social media marketing and user growth that has been waning over the last while, and its latest effort has been a cosmetic one.

The little yellow star that was once meant for favorites has been changed into a little red heart for likes.

According to Twitter, itself, the reason it made the change was that the star icon was potentially leading to confusion among its users. However, the heart icon is more universally recognized around the globe as indicative of something that you like or love. However, this change has not necessarily been generating a tremendous number of heart shaped responses from the actual users of this network and it is unclear as to what impact it will have on social media marketing on that platform.

The hope is that tweeting and social media marketing will occur with less confusion using hearts and likes.

Many people have been complaining that it wasn’t the star but the change that has been the most confusing. The reason is that they felt the star was unique to Twitter and that users were able to figure out what it was for and when to use it. However, the heart is found all over other social media platforms and is used for different purposes. For example, it is an emoticon/emoji in Facebook and Instagram. By changing to the heart, some users have complained that Twitter is reducing its uniqueness.

Twitter, as a whole, can be rather intimidating for a brand new user. The entire concept often feels mysterious to a person who is only just beginning. However, it usually doesn’t take long to figure out and it is hardly something that requires vast tech degrees, say users who have tweeted their frustration about the change. That said, they pointed out that among all the features in Twitter and its social media marketing that can be considered the most confusing, the little star for “favorites” was hardly the greatest offender.