Facebook priced its initial public offering at $38 per share, which is at the high end of the range it proposed on Tuesday. The price will raise $16 billion for the company and the social network a valuation over $100 billion.

The company plans to list 421.2 million shares of its common stock on the Nasdaq on Friday under the symbol FB. Facebook is offering 180 million of its shares. The remainder of the shares come from existing stockholders — a number of whom decided Wednesday to sell a greater proportion of their shares. Additionally, underwriters have the option to purchase up to 63.18 million additional shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments, which they are expected to sell based on demand seen during Facebook’s roadshow.

The IPO will be largest ever for a technology company and the third largest overall in the U.S., behind Visa and General Motors.

Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Facebook.

Zynga’s newest mobile game is Zombie Swipeout, an undead-themed arcade title that builds on the swipe and slash mechanic pioneered by Halfbrick’s hit game Fruit Ninja.

Developed by the German arm of Zynga Mobile, the game is a sequel of sorts to ZombieSmash!, the GameDoctors developed tower defense game that required users to flick, drag and smash advancing hordes of zombie using touch controls. Zombie Swipeout was in the early stages of development when GameDoctors was acquired by Zynga in October 2011, and is the first game from the team to be released under the Zynga moniker.

Zombie Swipeout follows the further adventures of Joey, the hero of ZombieSmash!. As with Fruit Ninja, players swipe their fingers across their devices screen, with the goal of swiping through some objects while avoiding others. In Zombie Swipeout the goal is to cut up zombies while avoiding Joey. If a player hits Joey, they can choose to use a consumable med-pack item on him to keep playing or leave him to die, ending their current game. Players also collect a soft currency called coins, which can be used to purchase new weapons, some of which give competitive bonuses or allow players to earn score multipliers more quickly.

While the gameplay is obviously similar to Halfbrick’s series of Fruit Ninja titles, Zynga adds some strategic and competitive elements to Zombie Swipeout to set it apart from other games in the genre. Here are the key differences:

• Social Features: Zombie Swipeout is heavily geared towards competitive play. Players can log in through Facebook Connect to compete with their friends, or trade ZombieSmash usernames directly in order to add more people to their leaderboards. Players compete in weekly tournaments, and Zombie Swipeout keeps a record of how many first, second and third place finishes a player has managed to amass. Players can also send each other gifts of soft currency in order to help each other progress through the game. By comparison, Fruit Ninja has leaderboards and achievements implemented through Game Center and OpenFeint, but players cannot send gifts to each other.
• Leveling up: Unlike Fruit Ninja, players in Zombie Swipeout also level up as they play. Leveling up grants players to additional power-ups that make it easier to cut up zombies such as liquid nitrogen and grenades.
• Energy and weapons: Players in Zombie Smash must balance the bonuses awarded by more advanced weapons against their energy consumption. A higher level weapon will give better score bonuses but it will also take more of a player’s energy to use it. While players can unlock additional weapons and backgrounds in Fruit Ninja through in-game achievements, they are only cosmetic and don’t affect gameplay.
• Monetization: While the full version of Fruit Ninja is a $0.99 paid title on iOS, Zombie Swipeout is free-to-play. The game monetizes through the purchase of its soft currency, coins (used to buy better weapons, Med Packs and restore energy) and gems, the hard currency used to buy premium weapons. Like Zynga’s other games players can also purchase a $0.99 premium version of Zombie Swipeout that does not show ads.

Despite Zombie Swipeout’s gory theme and visuals, GameDoctors co-founder and now Director at Zynga Mobile Matthias Hoechsmann tell us us the game was designed to appeal to a broad, casual audience. As such, the blood in the game can be red, green or turned off altogether.

Zombie Swipeout is out today in the Canadian iTunes App Store and will be rolling out to other countries soon. Hoechsmann tells us as with ZombieSmash! there are plans to bring Zombie Swipeout to Android eventually, but there is no set timeline for the game’s Android release.

Zombies, Run! developer Six to Start has revealed that it’s complicated, but not impossible to set up a pre-order system for an iOS game. The London-based studio was able to work directly with Apple to ensure backers for its successful Kickstarter campaign would be able to receive the 3000 plus copies of the game they had been promised in return for their donations.

Typically, the iTunes App Store allots 50 promotional codes per version of a game — enough for reviews, but not enough for a crowd-sourcing campaign, where the most common reward for donating is a free copy of the finished product.

Six to Start’s campaign ended on Oct. 2011 with over $72,000 raised and more than 3,400 backers, almost all of whom had essentially pre-ordered a copy of the game. After discussing plans with Apple, the company created two copies of the game, the standard, $7.99 paid version of Zombies Run, and a free version called ZR Advance. Six to Start declined to explain in more detail how exactly Apple contacted them or who they talked to at the company.

Backers were asked to set up a password connected to their email account in advance, and on the day of release, Kickstarter contributors were able to use their email and password to unlock the full game’s content from within the free app.

While not an official strategy endorsed by Apple, its an efficient solution for an independent developer with a relatively small amount of product to distribute. It’s unclear, however, what sort of deal the developers behind bigger crowd-sourcing campaigns with iOS rewards (the successful République Kickstarter has promised over 7,000 copies of the game) will be able to strike with Apple, and if Apple will still allow such a workaround in the future if crowd-sourcing becomes more common.

Developers considering crowd-sourcing the funding for mobile games through platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo or AppStori, should carefully consider iOS distribution before launching their campaigns.

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: SoJo Studios,  TinyCo, Wooga, King.com, Machine Zone, GameHouse,  Ryzing, Sneaky Games, IMVU, PopCap Games, High 5 Games, Kellen Company, SponsorPay, Warner Bros, Fiveonenine Games and Sociable Labs.

• Mobile Games Lead (PM/Design)

• Integration Engineer
• Senior Mobile Ad Sales Manager
• Mobile Developer Relations Manager

• Backend Engineer
• C++ Game Engineer

• Game Improvement Specialist
• Localization QA Analyst
• Marketing Manager
• Player Experience Manager
• Product Manager – Bubble Island

• Senior Producer, Skillgames
• Hadoop Developer/Engineer
• Game Artist
• Senior Producer, Social Games
• Business Developer
• Business Intelligence Developer
• Game Artist Malm
• Game Artist Mobile
• Game Programmer
• Game Developer
• Graphic Designer – Vanadisplan
• Graphic Designer – Malm
• IT Technical Recruiter
• Java Developer
• Product Manager
• Senior Systems Developer
• Awesome 3D Artist
• System Administrator
• Tools Programmer
• Senior Producer, Skillgames
• Hadoop Developer/Engineer
• Game Artist
• Senior Producer, Social Games

• Senior Graphics Engineer

• Lead Software Development Engineer

• AS3 Flash Developer

• Programmer

• Senior Program Manager

• Lead Animator
• Technical Marketing Campaign Manager

• Director, Audience Insights
• Social Media Analyst

• Communications Specialist

• Business Analyst- Digital Games
• Associate Product Manager, Digital Games

• Director of Monetization

• Social Interaction Designer

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

100 Floors is a new iOS release from Tobi Apps. Like its spiritual — though unrelated — precursor DOOORS, 100 Floors is a “room escape” puzzle adventure game that has proven immensely popular with mobile gamers. At the time of writing, it is the No. 2 free app on iPhone having spent most of the month of May in the top 3 — occasionally even at No. 1. It’s available now as a free, non-Universal iPhone download from the App Store.

Like DOOORS, 100 Floors tasks players with escaping from a variety of innocuous-looking rooms using only the items around them and the capabilities of their phone. Rather than simply moving from room to room as in DOOORS, however, 100 Floors sees players attempting to open a series of elevator doors to ride up to the next floor. Despite the name, the game does not yet feature 100 levels, though the developer is providing regular free updates with new challenges as well as soliciting feedback and suggestions from the community.

Early levels are very simple, requiring the player to simply make one or two actions to open the doors. As the game progresses, however, solutions become more and more esoteric, making use of not only the touchscreen of the iPhone but also its accelerometer. Sometimes players might have to shake or tilt the device; others they must simply figure out what they need to tap, drag or pinch on in order to proceed.

Like most games of this type, 100 Floors offers absolutely no explanatory text whatsoever, meaning a key part of the experience for the player is discovering exactly what they have to do. This generally involves prodding, poking and pinching the screen as well as tilting or wobbling the device around just to see if anything happens. As happened with DOOORS and other similar games, an informal community has developed among the App Store reviewers for the game, posting solutions to the various puzzles in lieu of actual reviews.

The game monetizes entirely through banner ads present at the bottom of the screen during play. There is no facility to remove these via in-app purchase, and no other means for a player to give the developer money. The ads are not overly obtrusive, but it is at times easy to accidentally tap on them during play, causing the device to switch over to Safari and display the link in question. Some App Store reviewers have indicated that they would prefer a paid option to remove advertising altogether.

The game also does not feature any social features. Since the game is a solitary puzzle title, this is unsurprising, though the addition of a Game Center leaderboard showing progress, achievements to celebrate milestones or the facility to brag about solving particularly challenging floors via social networks would doubtless help with the game’s virality. That said, given that the game has been riding high in the charts for most of the month so far, one could argue that the game doesn’t need any additional help with promotion.

100 Floors is a simple, addictive, minimalist experience. Its popularity stems from the fact that while the puzzles offer no explanation, the discovery of a solution is immensely satisfying. While its high ranking in the charts may be relatively short-lived if DOOORS’ ranking pattern is anything to go by, it will doubtless help to build a good name for the developer along with some modest monetization via advertising.

100 Floors is currently the No. 2 free app and the No. 1 free game in the App Store charts. Follow its progress with AppData, our tracking service for iOS and social games and developers.

Kabam once again leads the top grossing iOS charts again, claiming the No. 1 spot for the second week in a row with Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North. The game has managed to stay at No. 1, or close to it, since the end of March — an impressive run at the top.

This week’s fastest gaining iPhone app was Machine Zone’s Race Or Die 2. Despite being a fairly standard mid-core, text-based RPG, the game has proven to be a big hit with players, shooting to the top of both the free and top grossing charts since its debut in early May. Our full review of the game can be found here.

On the iPad charts utility Quickoffice Pro HD breaks the iron grip of the popular games genre on the No. 1 position, landing developer Quickoffice at the top of the charts. Like Kabam’s Kingdoms of Camelot, Quickoffice Pro HD has been maintaining a top 10 position on the top grossing charts for the better part of a month. Unlike many of the top grossing iOS apps, Quickoffice Pro HD is a premium-priced paid app, costing $19.99.

This week’s top grossing iPhone apps

This week’s top grossing iPad apps

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service AppData.

After more than three weeks at the top of the Android top grossing charts, DeNA has brought its hit Rage of Bahamut to the U.S. iTunes App Store. It’s a sign that the long-delayed iOS version of the Mobage platform — originally scheduled to come out sometime in either November or December 2011 — is finally ready.

The arrivial of the Japanese-developed game, which has so far been DeNA’s biggest hit in North America, sets the company up to compete on an equal footing with arch-rival GREE on iOS. In its most recent earnings call, GREE revealed its long-anticipated global mobile-social gaming platform will go live in 153 countries at the end of May.

Even without its network ready, GREE has seen some early success on iOS with its first North American-developed game Zombie Jombie. The title has been downloaded more than 1 million times and has recently surged up to the No. 17 spot on the top grossing iOS apps chart.

Both Zombie Jombie and Rage of Bahamut are card-battle games, a genre that has proven to be extremely popular and lucrative in Japan. According to industry watcher Dr. Serkan Toto, during the past year at least 50 percent of the top grossing games on both the GREE and Mobage networks have been card-battle games. While it remains to be seen if the genre will see the same success in North America, so far both games are off to solid starts.

There are now six Mobage games on iOS, four of which — Ninja Royale, Dreamtopia, Magical world of Decotower and Rage of Bahamut — are less than a month old.

App tracking company Distimo has released a new report revealing how many downloads it takes to get an app into the top 25 of the free and paid charts in the U.S. iTunes App Store — 38,400 and 3,530, respectively.

The 38,400 figure is down significantly from from what Distimo reported in December, where it took an average of 45,000 downloads a day to to reach the top 25 on the free apps chart in the U.S. It’s likely the number has declined because of Apple’s crackdown on download bots, a tactic some developers used to artificially inflate their app’s position on the free app charts. The effects of Apple’s new policy have been noticeable. In March, for example, Fiksu found that download volume for the top 200 free iPhone apps in the U.S. had dropped by 30 percent, down to the lowest levels the App Store had seen since September 2011.

To get its latest numbers, Distimo monitored the U.S. App Store for the month of April. The report qualifies that the number of downloads needed can vary wildly depending on what category an app falls into. Getting an app into the top 25 of the games category will take at least 75 times the number of downloads it does to get an app into a niche category like medical or weather — a rule that applies to both the free and the paid charts. A game app required around 25,300 downloads, but niche applications like news, finance and sports apps only need to see about 1,000 downloads a day to become chart toppers.

Over the past year, we’ve heard from several developers that the paid version of an app will only see about one tenth of the downloads a free version will, an assertion that seems consistent with what we see on the paid app charts. Distimo found that overall the volume needed to hit the top 25 on the free app charts was 13 times higher than the volume needed to hit the top 25 on the paid app charts. The analytics company also reports that in April a top 25 ranked paid app would need to downloaded 3,530 times in a single day. Games were once again the most competitive category, with an app needing 2,280 paid downloads to reach the top 25.

For both free and paid games, the most competitive categories were arcade, action and puzzle, with educational, trivia and music games being the least popular overall.

Mobile app development platform Appcelerator has added an additional $3 million in funding from Presidio Ventures to its Series C round, reports The Next Web.

The developer’s most recent round of funding was a $16 million venture round that closed on Feb. 24. In total, the company has now raised more than $51.5 million in venture capital from the likes of Storm Ventures, Translink Capital and Relay Ventures.

According to a statement provided to The Next Web by Appcelerator co-founder and CEO Jeff Haynie, the company will use the funding and its new connection to Presidio Ventures — the venture capital arm of Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation — to expand its business in Japan and the Asia Pacific region.

Last month, Appcelerator launched the latest version of its mobile app development platform, Titanium 2.0 and unveiled its new cloud service offerings. Developers who work with Appcelerator can now create native iOS, Android and web apps, while using the company’s cloud services to incorporate pre-built APIs for common cloud features like photo storage and sharing, push notifications and chat.

So far, more than 300,000 mobile developers have registered with Appcelerator and have used the company’s platform to build over 40,000 apps.

Snabbit from independent Norwegian developer TapCat is a simple Snake-like game for iOS devices and Mac. The game is an evolution of the company’s previous title SnakeRace, challenging players to hurtle through space and collect stars in order to score as many points as possible.

Snabbit’s gameplay is very simple. The titular snake-like creature flies through space automatically, either diagonally up and right or up and left. Tapping either side of the screen (or simply clicking the mouse button on Mac) causes Snabbit to change direction. The basic goal of each level is to reach the finish line, but unlocking later levels is dependent on collecting stars scattered through the maze-like scenery. Up to three stars may be collected on each level, and they are often hidden in awkward to reach places. Unlike its inspiration Snake, Snabbit does not immediately die upon crashing into a wall — he simply loses a chunk of his body, with the player only failing the level if they lose all of Snabbit’s segments.

Snabbit features social play through both Game Center and Facebook. Players may compete against friends in a special competitive “Survival With Friends” mode in which they are challenged to simply last as long as possible in an endless, randomly-generated level that gradually increases in speed. They may also brag about their scores on individual levels via Facebook.

Perhaps the most interesting use of Facebook connectivity, however, is the developers “The One Percent” competition. By logging in to Facebook, players gain the ability to access a level editor with which they can construct and publish their own challenges. These may then be downloaded by other players who own the game, and on August 4, 2012, TapCat will enter into an agreement to permanently share 1% of the game’s revenue with the player who created the level with the most unique device hits. Levels may be shared between the iOS and Mac versions of the game as they are attached to a player’s Facebook account. This means that someone who owns both the iOS and Mac versions can begin designing a level on their computer and later finish it off using the touchscreen of their iOS device, or vice-versa. Players may also easily access levels created by their friends.

The iOS version of Snabbit is available in both free and paid versions. The free version gives access to two of the game’s “worlds” and the level editor. Purchasing the paid version — which is sold separately rather than as an in-app purchase — unlocks the third world, the ability to play levels created by friends and the competitive Survival With Friends mode.

Snabbit is a good mobile game. It’s simple and quick to play, addictive and competitive. The addition of the revenue-sharing competition to the mix may encourage more players to try the game, though it remains to be seen whether or not the game will enjoy the level of success its developers are hoping for. With a low price for the paid version and no in-app purchases in either edition at this time, the game may struggle to monetize in the long term if it is unable to build a substantial audience.

Snabbit’s free iOS version is currently not listed in any App Store leaderboards, but you will be able to check its AppData page shortly to see a detailed breakdown of its performance. The paid version is currently ranked at No. 372 in Top Paid Apps, No. 178 in Top Paid iPad Apps, No. 165 in Top Paid Games and No. 94 in Top Paid iPad Games. Follow the game’s progress with AppData, our tracking service for iOS and social games and developers.