Cafe.com provides an interactive multi player game combined with a social network background.  Users can setup a free account, and then download free games.  They can select an Avatar and then play the game online with other friends or players.  The games are free, there is no adware or spyware.

Cafe.com business model is to make money off of selling upgrades, better avatars, accessories, more game levels or options.  But the starting point is free and does give users a way to play and hang out online.

More and more business models like cafe.com’s are popping up as businesses learn how to create a market, capture a market, nurture a market or harvest a market ripe for the picking.

The avatars are interesting enough and definitely fun looking.  There are many different movements and gestures that your avatars can perform adding a visual social dynamic to the entire game process.  The games aren’t going to entice the hard core gamers much, but they will prove addictive and the social environment reinforces that more and more.

At the end of the day people like to play games.  The games do not have to be super complex as long as other people are involved.  That social dynamic combined with avatars that put the human face and body language on the situation make this sites and sites like it work well.

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Technorati tags: avatar, video game, social networking

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Maven Mapper’s Information is undergoing a review of many different Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing Services, service providers and consultants. 

Today we are reviewing DiscountClick Online Marketing Services.  DiscountClick provides a suite of SEO and SEM services from link building services to SEO consulting to Natural Search Engine Optimization and PayPerClick Management.  Their SEO promotion includes an optimization consultation to analyze a clients company, their website and competitor websites.  From this point they will build a strategy with a targeted cost point to generate results and return on investment.

They also offer a Search Engine Optimization Tutorial guide that can help companies and potential clients gain a better appreciation for the importance of Search Engine Optimization and the work and art combined to create successful Search Engine Marketing results.

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Business 2.0 writes a great review of Digg.com and founder Kevin Rose (formerly of Tech TV-Business 2.0 picture ->Right ).

Kevin is quoted in the article as he describes his premise by stating, “My idea was to start a news website where you would give complete control to the community, a site where users could submit stories that would fall into a general queue, and if they were popular enough–if they got enough ‘diggs’ [user endorsements]–they would be promoted to the homepage for everyone to see.”

Digg has grown from a 12,000 user group in its firts 4 months to a 180,000 user group, and a rumored Yahoo takeover target. Why?

Digg noted that popular sites of 2004 (Slashdot-Community ratings) & (MySpace - Social networking) & (Del.icio.us - Tags to let users categorize stories) all offered up great components, which Digg has attempted to incorporate into a news feed and aggregation service where the users provide news items which are rate by the community or a mob of 180,000 editors which based on the movement or trend of the masses, help to identify what’s at the top of the news, and from the flipside the tool lets you dig into which stories are being lost or buried in the background.

Digging up the news - Mar. 27, 2006

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