LOUD

• 06.01.2012 Posted by Donna
  Justin Bieber’s new Facebook game for real-world social good
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WeTopia is a new social game that enables players to directly fund initiatives that improve the lives of children.

Free to play via Facebook, players create and manage their own villages, making a real-world donation for any virtual purchase — for example, when trees or vitamins are bought in the game, a partner charity will donate the same item to a community they work with. Players can also earn ‘Joy’ points, which can be spent on charitable projects in the real world.

Games for charitable benefit sounds like a great idea. CityVille and FarmVille had a user base of close to 100 million at their peak. However, social games can get old fast and user numbers can drop as quickly as they grow.

But then again CityVille didn’t have Justin Bieber. The Biebs has invested in WeTopia’s developer, Sojo (combination of ‘social’ and ‘joyful’) Studios. When he recently posted about WeTopia to his some 39 million Facebook fans, he received almost 28,000 ‘likes’, over 4,300 comments and 320 shares. Already, WeTopia has 460,000 monthly active users.

Here is LOUD’s first attempt at spreading joy. In 5 hours, we’ve donated two hot meals to Haiti and donated ‘Joy’ to the US Homeless Children Care Organisation. Not bad eh?

We’re quite proud of it but we’d need a lot more hours before it looks anything like this.