Dan Porter
GM New York, VP Mobile at Zynga
The Inside Story of The OMGPOP-Zynga Deal From The CEO, Investors & More!
We caught up with OMGPOP chief executive Dan Porter, Zynga’s chief mobile officer David Ko and board member and Spark Capital partner Bijan Sabet to get the inside story of how OMGPOP’s sale went down. It’s been a whirlwind six weeks for OMGPOP, which transformed from an also-ran social ... Read more »
OMGPOP Hits 1M Downloads For Draw Something App, “Locked Down” On Mobile Strategy
Described by CEO Dan Porter as a turn-based version of Pictionary, players are assigned things to draw, which can be simple (like a smile) or complicated (like a zombie), then their friends are supposed to guess what it is. Players have already created more than 20 million drawings... Read more »
Don’t call it a game: How Draw Something hit 30 million downloads — Tech News and Analy...
Instead, it’s more of a social communications app masquerading as a game, said OMGPOP CEO and Draw Something game designer Dan Porter. I sat down with Porter today at OMGPOP’s New York office and asked him about how he pulled off the immense success of Draw Something, which has ... Read more »
Draw Something to reward fans with new features
Dan Porter's company, the game publisher OMGPOP, had released about 35 games before he, as CEO, decided to try his own hand at game design. He had a goal: create a mobile game that would get 5 million downloads in three months. His concept to reach this goal? He had two specifications. ... Read more »
Living on the Edge: What OMGPOP’s Stunning Reversal Says about Modern Day Gaming
The other day, Dan Porter was in the elevator of his New York office building, one populated by several startups. A hip kid working for one of the other startups, which Porter declined to name, asked Porter if he worked in the building. “Yeah, I’m the CEO of OMGPOP ,” he ... Read more »
Done Deal: Zynga Gets “Draw Something” Phenom By Acquiring OMGPOP. (We’re Hearing...
OMGPOP chief executive Dan Porter becomes Zynga’s general manager and vice president of New York and the company’s employees will join Zynga. Draw Something has been an incredible turnaround for OMGPOP, which had struggled to find a hit on its own destination site and then on the ... Read more »
A Picture’s Worth 12 Million Downloads: Draw Something Is #1 on iOS and Android
Considering all of Draw Something’s downloads were in the last month, it technically already has 12 million monthly active users though some may be the same people on different devices Of all those comparisons, OMGPOP’s CEO Dan Porter explains Draw Something is most similar to Instagram ... Read more »
OMGPOP Head Dan Porter Leaves Zynga A Year After $180M Acquisition, Former CityVille GM Sean Kelly S...
Dan Porter, who led Draw Something-maker OMGPOP into is $180 million acquisition by Zynga, is leaving the company just a year after the deal closed. His departure comes just on the eve of Draw Something 2′s launch, which is supposed to be the big follow-up to the original and is already ... Read more »
Under Zynga’s Ownership, OMGPop Wants NYC to Be a ‘Hotbed’ for Game Development
Two months ago, Dan Porter was probably wondering if his four-year-old gaming startup would ever have a big hit. Today he’s a millionaire* and a VP of Development for the New York arm of the country’s largest gaming company. Zynga acquired Porter’s OMGPOP for a reported $180 ... Read more »
Draw Something: The Mobile Game That Won the App Store Without Any Press
“There was nothing written about us,” says Dan Porter, the CEO of a company called OMGPOP that created the app. “[Reporters] weren’t interested. I tried, but I couldn’t even get their attention.” Press is often cited as the best way to get an app to stand apart from the approximately ... Read more »
OMGPOP's Draw Something Mobile App Hits 5 Million Downloads
Now they're making 500 drawings per second," says Draw Something creator and OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter. Porter, who says he's never seen a game grow like this, thinks the secret to his app's virality is its social nature. "There are very few games where you play with other people. ... Read more »
Why Dan Porter Is Leaving Zynga
We think Dan Porter's exit at Zynga is a sign of a bigger shakeup at the games maker, as it tries to figure out whether it's future lies in social games like FarmVille or mobile games like Words With Friends and Draw Something. Sean Kelly, a Zynga VP who spearheaded its move into mobile ... Read more »
'Draw Something' update adds chat, photo capturing, sharing
"There are more features people want in the game, and there's no way we could scale enough people fast enough," OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter told Mashable shortly after the acquisition. "The game is so large that you need a really big scale. " At the time, Porter told Mashable that the ... Read more »
Cheating rampant on OMGPOP's Draw Something
Dan Porter, the chief executive of OMGPOP, said that as the game has evolved from a PC-only title ("Draw My Thing"), cheating has become less of a problem. For one thing, unlike the Web version, which matched Internet players against each other, the mobile version is designed to be ... Read more »
Zynga Explains Its Titanic $200 Million Acquisition Of Draw Something
Hours after Zynga paid ~$200 million for social gaming startup OMGPOP, we sat down with CEO Dan Porter to find out more about the decision. He was joined by Zynga's chief mobile exec David Ko. While Zynga is technically buying OMGPOP, the reality is that it's buying "Draw Something," a ... Read more »
Draw Something Draws a Bundle
“I play with one of my kids,” said Dan Porter, OMGPOP’s chief executive. “It’s such a window into the way they look at the world. Any word can be drawn in any way. Someone said, ‘When I play with my wife, I know in one line exactly what she’s going to draw.’ I saw a tweet from someone ... Read more »
Not to be outdone, Zynga buys 'Draw Something'
OMGPOP will maintain its New York game studios and be headed by current Chief Executive Officer Dan Porter. "Maybe we can turn New York City into a new hotbed for games as well," Porter said. OMGPOP began in 2006 as an Internet game site called ImInLikeWithYou. The company has ... Read more »
Zynga Announces Acquisition of Draw Something Creator OMGPOP
Dan Porter, CEO of OMGPOP, will now serve as vice president of Zynga New York. The rest of the staff will also stay in OMGPOP’s Soho office. According to Porter, the deal makes sense for OMGPOP because Zynga’s size will allow for Draw Something to add much-requested features such ... Read more »
Six Weeks After Launch, Red-Hot App Draw Something Has Been Downloaded 35 Million Times
Draw Something, the flagship app just acquired by Zynga moments ago, has been downloaded more than 35 million times since it launched six weeks ago, OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter announced today. OMGPOP "took a whiff" with the game and it's succeeded beyond all its expectations, he said on the ... Read more »
Zynga Buys OMGPOP: Words With Friends Maker Acquires Draw Something Maker In Huge Deal
The big draw for Zynga, however, was no doubt Draw Something, which OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter says won't change much after the acquisition: "Zynga offered us a chance to focus on Draw Something - they know the power of the game and they planned with us how to let it keep rolling in the same ... Read more »
