SkillPod Media, a foremost South African owned online casual gaming supplier, has hit the ground running in the new year - launching 2 new games platforms on large online entertainment sites and rolling out a number of new features on its successful online gaming platform.

And just in case anyone thought the company was slacking off, it has also launched its own Facebook games application and formed a partnership with a world-renowned game development house.

SkillPod Media, until recently known as Trafficonomy, provides free and skill games to large gaming communities in South Africa and internationally. It is also the leading supplier of online gaming advertising in SA.

New gaming site launched for 24.com

SkillPod Media has launched a casual games site for the 24.com group. Situated at FunGames.24.com, it integrates casual games with 24.com’s other social networking features like blogging, photo albums and messaging. This gives the user a combined entertainment and social networking space all in one, accessed via a single global user account.

“With the much-vaunted rise of Web 2.0, entertainment websites are looking to expand their features to offer a combination of entertainment and social networking abilities to users, all in one space,” comments Mark van Diggelen, CEO of SkillPod Media. “This year is being predicted as the year when social networking will start to mature after the hype of 2007, and our partnership with 24.com signals its intent to seriously build on last year’s momentum. On the gaming side, this is something that SkillPod Media is ideally poised to assist with,” he continues.

Leading Irish entertainment portal partnership

SkillPod Media’s other new partnership is with Entertainment.ie, a leading Irish entertainment portal. The portal offers a wide range of international entertainment news, reviews, events and competitions tailored for the Irish market - movies, TV, music are all covered in a variety of media formats. The portal has chosen SkillPod Media to supply free games for its users.

“We’re very happy with the way our international client base is growing,” says Van Diggelen. “We are now represented on websites and entertainment portals serving diverse audiences, from India to Canada, including the UK and USA.”

SkillPod games on Facebook

The runaway success of Facebook prompted SkillPod Media to develop a Facebook games application. Facebook users can now get access to 500 games on the SkillPod.com portal, via the Facebook interface. This gives the company a powerful new reach in the social networking market.

Partnership with a world-renowned game development house

Another new development is the launch of PC Games, a partnership with world-renowned game development house, Nano Games. There are currently 5 titles on offer for purchase and download. Plans are afoot to debut a level-based game soon, consisting of 12 chapters with a new level available each month.

New games platform features

To further enhance its offering for all its new partners, SkillPod Media has updated its games platform with a number of new features. In addition to playing online, users can now download versions of the most popular games – 220 games in total are available for download. New games have also been added to the online selection, including 70 high score games and 30 premium games.