Former AdMob VP Joins CrowdStar As CEO

Social game developer CrowdStar (Happy Aquarium, Happy Island) announced that it's appointed Niren Hiro, formerly an executive at mobile advertising marketplace AdMob, as its new chief executive officer. Hiro pledges to help the company release new titles across online and mobile platforms, expand to new markets, and add new sources of revenue. Hiro has held management positions at various internet, mobile, and media companies including Yahoo!, CBS Sportsline, MTV Networks, and others. Immediately prior to CrowdStar, he was at AdMob, where he worked for more than four years, most recently as vice president and managing director of the firm's Asia-Pacific and Latin America division. CrowdStar's games have attracted more than 42 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to figures from AppData. Its most popular title, Happy Aquarium, alone has around 17 million players since launching last September and is currently the 13th most popular application on the social network. The studio has extended Happy Aquarium beyond Facebook, too, launching the free-to-play, microtransactions-based game on Japanese social network Mixi across both PC and mobile phone platforms, where CrowdStar says the title is "growing rapidly". "Niren brings an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience to CrowdStar from high growth media, entertainment, and mobile companies like Yahoo!, MTV, and AdMob both in the U.S. and internationally," says CrowdStar co-founder and executive chairman Peter Relan. He adds, "Social games, virtual goods, and micro-transactions will grow manifold in the coming years and I look forward to working with Niren as he leverages his entertainment and media background to steer CrowdStar's network of games to even higher levels of success."