Interview with Dan Porter, CEO of OMGPOP

The top of the mobile charts is ever changing. We’ve seen Angry Birds, Words with Friends and Temple Run high up there, but now Draw Something has topped both the Android and the iOS charts. We saw this as a fitting time to interview the CEO of OMGPOP, the developers behind Draw Something, Dan Porter.

For some of you who have yet to try your artistic skill at Draw Something, here’s the basic idea of it. You start a game with either a friend or a stranger then you are presented with three words. Each word gives you a different number of coins (1, 2 or 3) and the more coins, the more difficult the word (supposedly). You then attempt to draw the word you have selected and your friend/stranger has to guess what it is that you have drawn then vice versa. You can use the coins that you have gained to either buy bombs which either shorten the amount of letters to guess from or change the words or you can buy more colours of paint. Simples!

With Dan being quite the busy man, as you would expect, we kept this interview short and sweet! I kicked things off by getting right to the point and asked:

In your opinion, why do you think your hit app, Draw Something, has blown up so much?
“Draw Something is just awesome - and social. It gives people a way to be creative while playing a fun game with their friends!”

Upon release, how did you advertise Draw Something as it got little press coverage? Was it your dedicated fanbase that helped it explode?
“We advertised Draw Something on OMGPOP. We also used some paid marketing to promote the app at launch. These efforts lead to the first 40,000 downloads. After that, it was really word of mouth, Instagram and Twitter. People shared drawings from the game and told their family and friends to play. In ten days, over one million people were playing. I’ve never seen anything scale like this!”

What can we expect to see from OMGPOP in the coming twelve months?
“We have similar games launching in the coming months. Right now, nearly the entire staff are focusing on Draw Something.”

How did OMGPOP start?
“The company started in 2006 as iminlikewithyou, originally a site where people played games to meet each other. In 2009, we changed the name to OMGPOP, which had become a place where people meet each other to play games.”

How has OMGPOP evolved over the years?
OMGPOP started out focusing on socializing traditional arcade style games on the web. As Facebook grew as a platform for games, we moved to Facebook as well. Now we have reoriented to create truly social game experiences on mobile - iOS and Android - and we’re having huge success with this strategy.”

Some exciting stuff there and some fascinating insight into the company behind the game! We should be seeing a lot more (if that’s even possible) from Draw Something and OMGPOP in the next few months and we will be bringing all the information you need! Keep your eyes peeled.