Mobile gaming portal Cellufun and ClearSky Mobile Media is making available Cellufun’s games community to ClearSky’s existing wireless carrier partners. This relationship marks the first time Cellufun has worked with a managed service provider to deliver its games to a large network of more than two million customers in North America.

Cellufun is already attracting five million unique users a month to its virtual world, mainly from off-deck and individual carrier subscriber growth. By partnering with ClearSky, Cellufun games will receive prominent placement on subscriber handsets through a multitude of regional carrier networks, making it much easier for wireless customers to discover the Cellufun community.

KickApps has closed its Series C funding of $14 million to accelerate company expansion into new markets and continued product innovation. The round was led by North Atlantic Capital, with participation from existing investors Softbank, Spark Capital, Prism Ventures and Jarl Mohn, former CEO of Liberty Digital, Inc.

The financing follows the company’s rapid growth and adoption of its Platform by web publishers and brands worldwide over the last eighteen months. During this time, digital strategists, developers and designers turned to KickApps to integrate social features, such as social networks, media sharing, commenting, rating, blogs, widgets, online video and message boards, throughout their websites.

KickApps currently powers social and media experiences on over 48,000 websites in virtually every industry, including media, entertainment, sports, magazine publishing, travel, live events, radio, television, online retail, food, healthcare, fitness, education, non-profits and B2B online communities. This was also fueled by the company’s international expansion, through a growing market presence in Europe, South America and Asia, representing approximately 35 percent of its customer base.

Userplane announced that users of the Userplane Chat App can now chat with other users logged into the popular chat application regardless of where they are on the web. Userplane’s Chat App plugs into the open platforms of leading social networking communities, including Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, Ning, Flux, and Bebo, as well as start-up social communities beginning to build their audiences.

Userplane’s Chat App has thousands of users daily and contains a general chat room with A/V support as well as many specific topic and location-based rooms within the space. Built on the customizable Userplane Webchat product, the Userplane Chat App has quickly become a highly trafficked chat experience within top social networking sites on the web.

Userplane’s cross-platform chat is available for use on social networks that support an open API initiative. Web publishers interested in more details on implementing this reciprocal application should contact bizdev@userplane.com, or visit www.userplane.com.

Major League Baseball Properties has licensed Commodore Gaming the rights to produce personal computers and PC cases decorated with artwork and themes associated with all MLB teams. Now customers of Commodore Gaming and Major League Baseball fans can own top-notch personal computers that represent their passion for their favorite ball team. From the Windows desktop theme to the exterior of the PC a MLB Series Commodore Gaming computer is decorated with the team artwork.

The company’s exclusive “C-kin” high-definition paint process is designed to produce visually-stunning PC exteriors. Commodore C-kins are not stickers or vinyl layers, but chassis panels permanently decorated to a finish much like an automotive paint job. High-definition artwork is baked on metal case at 350 degrees Fahrenheit then covered with a durable anti-scratch layer for protection and shine. The result is beautiful and extremely durable.

i.TV has integrated Netflix into its TV and movie guide for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Netflix on i.TV allows people to discover media from a catalog of over 100,000 DVD titles–complete with detailed show information, ratings, cast credits and recommendations.

Through i.TV, users can sign up for a Netflix account or link an existing Netflix account using an iPhone or iPod touch. After account setup, i.TV users can have DVDs delivered to their homes, and order content available for instant viewing on a PC or television from Netflix. Users can also add shows to their Netflix queue through i.TV, including new releases and titles that are scheduled for future release. Changes made to a Netflix user’s queue through i.TV are also automatically reflected on the user’s account at Netflix.com.

RetailMeNot.com creators, Stateless Systems, has launched BeatMyPrice.com, a people-powered price comparison engine. BeatMyPrice.com helps consumers find the lowest possible price for an item online by simultaneously searching millions of prices sourced from across the internet, comparing them against the best deals submitted directly by consumers and linking them to more than 100,000 coupons from RetailMeNot.com. BeatMyPrice.com works best when a consumer finds an item they want to buy and challenges the engine to find a lower price.

Here’s a brief tutorial of BeatMyPrice.com

PlaySpan, Inc. has raised $16.8 million in Series B investment from Easton Capital Group, Menlo Ventures, Novel TMT Ventures, STIC and other undisclosed investors. This new capital brings the company’s total funding to $24 million. The new funding will be used to expand into Europe and Asia and to grow PlaySpan’s global publisher and user-base.

“Online games publishers and social media application developers are looking for new sources of revenue beyond traditional advertising and subscriptions. We are enabling a new business model in the form of micro-transactions for users that prefer the pay-as-you-go model,” said Karl Mehta, Founder and CEO of PlaySpan. “It is a testament to our market-leading position, demonstrated growth, and the long-term potential of virtual goods and micro-transactions that we have raised a significant round in spite of the current economic climate.”

The pay-as-you-go model has gained rapid adoption and is poised for tremendous future growth because it gives consumers more control over their entertainment experience and offers publishers expanded revenue opportunities. PlaySpan offers publishers and developers a complete out-of-the-box platform for managing secure, efficient micro-transactions, virtual goods sales, global alternative payments and peer-to-peer trading. PlaySpan’s platform enables any developer to monetize any content at any price for any user in any country, said Mehta.

Universal Music Group (UMG) and Meebo have entered into an agreement to provide Meebo users with ad-supported videos from many of the most popular chart-topping artists in the world. The agreement will kick off by Meebo featuring artists Kanye West, Ludacris and The Killers at Meebo.com, where users will be able to view videos from the artists to promote their new albums. To augment the promotions, UMG will embed Meebo Rooms on official artist pages to enable real-time social interactions among fans.

The agreement with UMG creates opportunities for Meebo users to enjoy premium content and gives UMG access to premium promotional space to create significant online buzz for their artists. In addition to featuring new, hit videos on Meebo.com, UMG will utilize Meebo Rooms to enable real-time social interaction for fans visiting UMG artists’ official web properties. In the past, UMG has used Meebo Rooms to power a number of popular events, including an online listening party for Kanye West’s Graduation album and a live chat with hip-hop icon LL Cool J.

Imeem and Jive/Zomba announced the premiere of Circus, Britney Spears’ highly-anticipated new album, on social music service Imeem.

Fans can visit imeem.com/britneyspears to listen to Circus, 13 tracks in total, in its entirety, one week before its official release. Fans can also check out videos and playlists of Britney’s hits, including her latest single, “Womanizer.” Using Imeem’s embeddable music playlist widgets, fans can easily embed Circus on their blogs, web sites, and profiles on Facebook, MySpace and other social networking services. Fans can also pre-order the album from the iTunes Store via Britney’s Imeem profile.

imeem’s exclusive premiere of Circus comes one week before its release on December 2nd, Britney’s 27th birthday.

comScore released its ranking of the top search properties in Japan based on data from the comScore qSearch service. In September, 5.9 billion searches were conducted in Japan with each searcher conducting an average of 96 searches during the month. Yahoo! Sites led in search query volume with 3 billion searches, followed by Google Sites with 2.3 billion searches.

Yahoo! Sites led the search ranking in Japan with more than 3 billion searches, representing a 51 percent market share, followed by Google Sites with 2.3 billion searches (39 percent market share). Rakuten Inc. captured the third position with 120 million searches (2 percent market share) and Microsoft Sites ranked fourth with 90 million searches (1.5 percent market share).

In September, more than 340 million searchers conducted nearly 29 billion searches in the Asia-Pacific region, ranking it as the largest searcher population and search volume total of the five global regions reported by comScore. China had the largest searcher population in the region with more than 149 million searchers, and the greatest number of searches conducted (12.8 billion). Japan ranked second on both measures with more than 61 million searchers and nearly 6 billion searches. Australia exhibited the heaviest search intensity with an average of 115 searches per searcher during the month, followed by South Korea (109 searches per searcher) and Singapore (106 searches per searcher).