50 Million Strong: Shen Si, CEO and Co-founder of Papaya Mobile Speaks

We have covered many other social gaming platforms like GREE, DeNA, and mig33, but admittedly, we haven’t written too much about PapayaMobile (from now on we will). So when PapayaMobile’s co-founder and CEO, Shen Si and I briefly met at Beijing a couple of months ago, I thought it would be great to work on an interview to learn more about her experience and ventures.

Unfortunately, Shen Si [1] couldn’t meet up with me at the time, but we still managed to shake hands and exchange business cards. With our face-to-face interview called off, Shen Si has now taken time to share her thoughts with us in written form.

She shared several cool statistics, including PapayaMobile’s 50 million user milestone and its whopping average revenue-per-paying-user of $22. Other interesting insights include PapayaMobile’s expansion plan for 2012. For all the details, here’s the interview in full:

Could you briefly tell us, what is PapayaMobile?

Shen Si of Papaya Mobile

This is difficult because Papaya means so many different things to so many different groups of people. Web and mobile game developers love us because we offer a diverse tool set (Social Game Engine, Social SDK, Social Splash) to get their games created, ported, or connected to the best social network on the planet.

Our users love us because we have designed a network that makes it easy to make new friends and share lives and gaming experiences with each other. For me, however, Papaya is part of who I am and it continues to evolve everyday. It has always been about offering the best possible experience for mobile users and developers. We won’t quit even after we’re the last social network standing.

How is it different from GREE and DeNA?

We put developers first. I could point out dozens of differences between our platforms but at the end of the day this is what separates us from the competition. GREE and DeNA are both in the game publishing business and that’s what their investors are concerned with. Third party developers on their platform will always take a backseat when it comes to promotions and traffic.