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Bunchball, a web services company dedicated to making websites more addictive, is deploying its Games & Avatars application on global Social Media Network Bebo as part of the Bebo Open Application Platform, launched today at a private event in San Francisco. Bebo has announced that it will open its API to third-party developers to integrate their applications with the Bebo site.

Today’s announcement marks the first time users from different social networks can connect and interact through a common application — Bunchball Games & Avatars. In the Games & Avatars application, Bebo members earn “Karma Points” by watching videos, taking surveys, competing in single and multiplayer online games, playing the lottery, inviting their friends, and taking part in other site activities. Members can then redeem their Karma Points in Bunchball’s virtual economy by purchasing digital goods to customize their avatar and virtual room, paying their way into tournaments and poker games, and more.

Rather than being limited to just the Bebo community, Bunchball has connected their Bebo Games & Avatars deployment to all the other social networks that Bunchball services. Bebo members will be able to seamlessly play, compete and interact with members of the other networks and participate in a cross-network virtual economy.

The Games & Avatars application is 100% powered by Bunchball’s Nitro product: a suite of hosted services that drive user behavior and increase engagement on websites. Nitro’s lightweight, flexible architecture enabled Bunchball to quickly bridge Bebo and the other social networks and create this unique cross-network application.

www.bunchball.com, www.bebo.com

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Tags: ABC, Bebo, Bunchball, Disney, Facebook, Lifetime Television, NBC, Piczo, Toyota

Hot on the heels of its investment in Edgecast, Steamboat Ventures has splashed out on a stake in Scrapblog.

Scrapblog’s service allows users to create multimedia scrapbooks online using photos, video and audio as well as a variety of creative elements. Since Scrapblog’s launch this April, over a million scrapblog pages have been created. The company has recently attracted significant distribution partnerships including March of Dimes’ Every Baby has a Story, ABC’s Ugly Betty and ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas. The company expects to launch several additional partnerships around travel, weddings and parenting memories over the next few months.

David Min, principal of Steamboat, has joined the board of Scrapblog.

www.scrapblog.com

Full release

Tags: ABC, ScrapBlog, SteamBoat Ventures

The International Herald Tribune is reporting that ABC News and Facebook and have formally established a partnership - the site’s first with a news organization - that allows Facebook members to follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates, all within a new “U.S. Politics” category. To underscore their collaboration, the two organizations plan to announce Monday that they are jointly playing host to Democratic and Republican presidential debates in New Hampshire on Jan. 5, three days before the state’s primary elections.

For ABC News, the collaboration puts political content on a site with 56 million active users. For Facebook, it adds an authoritative source and fresh content for the site’s political section.

Tags: ABC, Facebook