Max Levchin: Will Virtual Goods Bring Slide Profitability Next Year? (Q&A)

VENTUREBEAT —Slide, which started in photo-sharing, moved into Facebook widgets and then raised funding at a reported $550 million valuation last year, shifted gears this year and went aggressively into virtual goods. The company’s looking to become a mainstream version of Second Life, where there’s a virtual economy at work of real people buying and selling goods. Instead of churning out new apps like many of its competitors, the company has focused its existing ones -- including seven on Facebook like SuperPoke, Top Friends and FunSpace, with about 27 million users between them. Slide introduced a virtual currency into its SuperPoke! Pets application, where you can raise and care for a virtual pet. You can earn gold through the game or you can purchase 10 pieces of Slide Gold for $1. So is the strategy shift paying off?...