Linden Lab loses Mark Kingdon

Social gaming startup Playdom raised another $33 million from Walt Disney, Steamboat Ventures, New World Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. This infusion of cash is on the heels of $43 million dollars from nine months ago. So far sources indicate the cash has been used for acquisitions of social gaming startups. The original round of financing was nine months ago and already seven acquisitions / investments have been made by Playdom to date. This social gaming sector for Venture Capital is becoming as popular as the privacy protection sector at the moment. According to PaidContent Zynga (a social gaming leader) raised an enormous $147 million just last week.

Linden lab the makers of second life lose the captain of their ship today, Mark Kingdon. We all know the rocket ship rise and fall of Linden Lab since 2007. It garnered similiar media attention like Twitter has recently. The shocking news is just two weeks after Linden Lab cut 30% of it’s staff. It’s a sad state of affairs coming from the Linden Lab Gold rush of virtual goods. Business 2.0 even reported about the virtual land developers of Second Life making a killing on undeveloped land and selling it to newbies for a mint. Every major corporate brand in America was setting up shop in Second Life to ride the 3D avatar Internet wave….until….ultimately “snow crash”. Linden Lab has raised $19 Million in cash to date and acquired well known avatar and virtual currency company Enemy Unknown.