THE SOCIAL TIMES — If you have or are planning to get into social game development on a tiny budget, you need to get financially creative and learn to bootstrap. The practice of bootstrapping a startup is essentially an act of balancing costs against revenues, and it applies as much to a game development studio as any other business. Do it right, and your business will likely survive long enough for your games to have a chance of success -- something that’s a necessity given how many small studios and bedroom entrepreneurs are jumping into the social game development space. Here are a few tips on bootstrapping as relevant to game development...

INSIDE FACEBOOK — Like players in many other industries, insurance companies have begun experimenting with how to use Facebook to reach more users and customers. The trend is to try to connect people around real-life topics -- not sales pitches. Searching for insurance agents on Facebook reveals that many of these companies have launched marketing campaigns on the site. Overall, State Farm appears to be the most ambitious, and successful...

EMARKETER BLOG — We recently spoke with Jeremy Lockhorn, the director of emerging media and video innovation at Razorfish, about best practices for approaching mobile app development and the importance of thinking about apps as part of a larger mobile marketing ecosystem. Here’s a snippet from the full interview...

TECHCRUNCH — PowerReviews, a company that provides customer review technology for retailers and e-commerce sites, has raised $6.1 million in funding led by current investors Menlo Ventures and Tenaya Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to over $30 million. The additional funding will be used fuel customer acquisition and for new product development...

ALL FACEBOOK — If you run a business and know the value of promotional campaigns on Facebook but have been stopped by the logistics, legal aspects and costs, you might want to check out Wildfire Interactive’s Promotion Builder application. The service, which has now been integrated with Publisher’s Clearing House’s new PCH Boost API for sweepstakes handling, is a great solution for instantly walking Facebook’s prohibitive promotional terms. Through an exclusive partnership between Wildfire and PCH, you have access to an SMM (Social Media Marketing) platform with multiple business benefits, including the ability to setup and publish promotional campaigns quickly...