The folks over at Japanese social gaming giant DeNA (TYO:2432) just made their holidays a little bit happier by announcing a partnership with Chinese social network Kaixin001. In an effort to boost its Mobage gaming platform in China, DeNA is leveraging the 120 million registered users on the Kaixin network in the hopes that many will play Mobage games, and tell their friends as well.
As a part of the cooperation between the two companies, Kaixin users will be able to access Mobage China with their own Kaixin logins. In addition, the Mobage China mobile app will feature ‘share on Kaixin001’ and ‘back to Kaixin001’ buttons. For DeNA this means that its games have a chance to spread among friends on the Chinese social network.
As for Kaixin, the share buttons mean a boost in traffic, which appears to us to be much needed. Earlier this year we looked at user traffic to the site, which had dropped significantly since early 2010 by a couple of different metrics. Kaixin enjoyed great popularity when it first started out, and I remember wasting more hours than I care to remember on Parking Wars (I just checked back in and my Maseratis are still there!). But the rise of microblogging (particularly Sina’s and Tencent’s Weibo) most likely have resulted in a corresponding decline for Kaixin, and its social games too.
We haven’t heard any details about Kaixin’s active user base in a long time, and I suspect that this is no accident. Just like Mixi in Japan, it would probably be in Kaixin’s best interests to ride that 120-million-registered-user figure for as long as it possibly can.
Three of my five virtual Masaratis. Thas right bitches...