So that’s how Badgeville is using some of that $25 million in funding from May. The engagement-focused startup (and former TechCrunch Disrupt participant) is today announcing the acquisition of the Gamification.org Community from Gamify, a two-year old online community that also just happened to have the rights to the the “gamification” username on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google+ . Yep, @gamification is now in the hands of Badgeville (or it will be as soon as they get the password, says Badgeville CEO Kris Duggan.)
While Duggan won’t disclose the terms of the deal, he notes that it was for the community and namespace assets only – they didn’t buy the company. It was a cash and equity deal, he says. [Update: we’re hearing that Gamify was asking $100,000-$300,000 for the property.]
Gamification.org’s founder, Nathan Lands, CEO of Gamify, was looking to unload the community, which is currently a wiki detailing gamification best practices and other related info. He brought it to Badgeville, saying it would be in the “best hands” with them, Duggan tells us. And it seems like it will be.
“We want to really go big with it,” Duggan says, referring to his planned changes. “it’s going to take us some time, but we want it to be the place where people have conversations and share best practices around gamification. We think not only dedicating headcount to the community would be really helpful – a community manger, content developers, and whatnot – but the other thing we’re really excited about is that we’ll be deploying Badgeville on the community.” Going forward, users will be able to build and demonstrate their gamification expertise on Gamification.org while talking about gamification. How meta!
Badgeville doesn’t have plans to remove the content Gamify had already posted, but will just continue to build out the properties with content of its own. Users won’t see any of these changes until the next few months, he says.
Currently, the site has several thousands contributors, but Duggan didn’t have other metrics on hand, he says. He added that one thing that made the community appealing is that Gamify had put a lot of work into its properties to get them a very high pagerank on Google.
The startup’s latest round of $25 million came from InterWest Partners, with participation from previous investors Norwest Venture Partners, El Dorado Ventures, and Trinity Ventures. To date, Badgeville had raised $40 million in total funding.
