Chris DeWolfe is best known for founding MySpace with Tom Anderson all the way back in 1998, and then selling it to News Corp., now 21st Century Fox, in 2005 for $580 million.

Creating a company from nothing and selling it for hundreds of millions is the name of the game in tech, although after the sale, MySpace dwindled away to be replaced by Facebook and other social media platforms.

No matter. DeWolfe moved on to found Santa Monica-based Social Gaming Network, which develops and distributes social and mobile games, such as Panda Pop and Juice Jam, around the world.

At last week’s PromaxBDA: The Conference at the J.W. Marriott LA Live, DeWolfe took an hour out of his busy schedule to chat with The Wrap’s founder and CEO, Sharon Waxman about the news of the day as well as the state of mobile gaming and worldwide Internet. Below are some highlights.

SHARON WAXMAN: I’m a news gal, so I have to ask. What do you think about the news of 21st Century Fox’s succession plans (news of which broke last Thursday, right before this panel). Since News Corp. bought MySpace, you were part of that company for a while.

CHRIS DEWOLFE: Rupert’s mother lived to be 103 years old. My guess is that Rupert will be around for a very long time and not a lot is going to change and they will still continue to flourish. I can’t see Rupert staying away from the company for very long.

WAXMAN: Your company, Social Gaming Network, has had this really remarkable growth, particularly over the past couple of years. How fast is the mobile gaming market growing?

DEWOLFE: The total size of the mobile gaming market is $35 billion. The primary reason for the growth is because everyone has a console in their pocket int the form of a smart phone and everyone has downtime.

The difference between our games and traditional console games is that our games are very easy to figure out what’s going on. You can play for five minutes and then go so something else. With traditional video games, you just have to do too much learning. In the U.S., people are impatient. They want to get in, get out, play and have fun.

WAXMAN: How much of a role does data play in your decision-making?

DEWOLFE: It’s still about having a good gut feeling creatively and then letting the data drive your decision making. At MySpace, there wasn’t enough emphasis on the data. But data has become fun. It’s exciting to wake up in the morning and look at the data. It just gets you thinking.

[Another reason I think we’ve been successful is because] we have created an ecosystem of game developers who make games for every demographic. From a hiring perspective, we’re on the leading edge of creating a diversified workforce. We have a lot of female executives who are helping us develop games for the female marketplace.

WAXMAN: How much of your growth is international and what do you see out there in the mobile gaming market in terms of opportunity?

DEWOLFE: There’s been a huge change for anyone involved in international marketing. You really have to think globally now. Some seven to eight years ago, all of the revenue came from the U.S., Canada and Western Europe. Now, 70% of the revenue is coming from outside North America, if you aren’t uniquely positioned to leverage what’s happening in Japan, you are going to be challenged to grow your business.

WAXMAN: Why is that?

DEWOLFE: I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the devices but more the infrastructure of these countries, such as Japan, South Korea and China. Japan and South Korea are growing their mobile broadband infrastructures ten times faster than the U.S. is. With China, it’s just because of the growing middle class and the sheer size of the country.

In Japan, they spend twice as much as we in the U.S. do on games. And culturally, people are willing to spend a lot more money on mobile content. Korea is similar, they overindex in a big way.

WAXMAN: What are some best practices when it comes to marketing to these countries?

DEWOLFE: You need a great translation company. These games have to see local and you do that by hiring a really great localization company. You also have to have some feet on the ground there that are always playing the game.

For example, in the U.S., we buy mobile apps from two places: Google Play or the Apple app store. In China, there’s 100 different people and places to whom you have to be integrated.

You also have to be strategic about where you spend your money. I may be spending advertising dollars on one source, only to realize it’s only yielding me a $10 lifetime spend from those subscribers. You need to spend the right money in the right places. We can tell within two days of acquiring a user how much money we are going to acquire from them over a lifetime.

Images courtesy of Image Group LA.

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