(Photo: wikipedia.org)

Game Over? There seems to be a mass exodus at Zynga. It was reported yesterday that Wilson Kriegel, the former chief revenue officer of Omgpop, has now left the company. In the last 30 days, the company has lost its COO, CCO, and two vice presidents. Maybe it's time for them to "draw something" different, like a new management plan.

A New Hope? In much better Zynga news, the company has partnered with Food Network's Robert Irvine to help beef up its Chefville game. Mr. Irvine has introduced a series of challenges to help improve the game where you run your own restaurant. "I couldn't be more honored to have an avatar of myself and Restaurant: Impossible be a part of ChefVille," Robert Irvine said in a press release. "As we lend insight to players on what it takes to create their dream restaurant while earning my approval."

Do It Live Livestream, the live video streaming service, announced full access to its suite of live video and live blogging tools. The suite includes encoding software for Mac and PC, ad-free event pages and mobile broadcasting to the web from their Livestream for Producers iPhone app. No ads during a broadcast? Perhaps they've been inspired by Occupy Wall Street's Ustream'er Tim Pool.

Oh You Fancy Huh? Just in time for Christmas shoppers who like to get stuff done early, Fancy has just launched a group gifting platform that allows users to create a gift, invite others to contribute to it, then sends the gift to the recipient. They've also announced a partnership with American Express to help designers like Prabal Gurung sell their goods on Fancy, while giving buyers rewards like cash back for big purchases.

Droid BFF's Sonar, the friend-finding app with the cute submarine mascot, just launched a version for Android. Along with the Android release, Sonar is adding six more language options to the app. The startup also slipped in a version of the android mascot (Andy Roid) into their app to chat with new users.

Tha Envelope Plz The Webby Awards have announced some new judges for this year's ceremony including Rachel Sterne and David Karp. Other new influencers on the panel include OK Go's lead singer Damien Kulash and Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale. Sounds viral enough to us.

Not Soup In case you weren't subscribed to enough luxury-lifestyle magazines, now there's DuJour. They already have three million subscribers through a glitzy partnership with Gilt Groupe. Their site is pretty glamorous and should trigger a consumerist impulse or two.

Get The Artists Rich Louis C.K.'s novel idea of independently selling tickets to his comedy shows has sparked a new venture called Artful.ly Open Source. It allows creators to sell tickets or accept donations without going through the big ticket companies or any expensive vendors. Quick, test it out before Dane Cook makes it uncool.

Ride or Die The team from Dwolla, the app that lets you send and receive money to other users, captured their ride in a special 1920's vehicle that was part of a promotion for HBO's Boardwalk Empire. The group told a passerby to download Uber in order to book his own ride in the car. We hope there was some sort of commission?

Bach To Relevance 92nd Street Y is attempting to rebrand Johann Sebastian Bach through an interactive keyboard website. Each key has a different video that shows you something about Bach you've never thought of before, like Lady Gaga's connection to the classical man, and cats enjoying Bach.

Our Two Favorite Adjectives Quirky and Fab have teamed up to sell a slew of custom designed iPhone 5 accessories. They have some shiny colorful cases, as well as this wallet/phone case that we're really digging.

Mr. Martin just a year ago. (Photo: Getty/AOL)

The news just keeps rolling out of TechCrunch Disrupt. (Guys, please save us a few stories for next week.) Sonar.me debuted last year on the battlefield and came close to taking home the grand prize. Today, they're debuting several new features with the goal of becoming your "here-now social network." Here's what's new: First off, they're adding tweet-like status messages, which'll show up for friends and other relevant people nearby. They're also adding notifications, so connections'll get a ping when you show up nearby. (They'll see your status message.) You can also now privately message someone who shows up in your vicinity. On top of all that, you can now run the app in the background, meaning you don't have to check in or sign on for your friends to see you're around. That should make it a lot easier for Sonar to convince, let's say, locked-in Foursquare users that they might want to try the service. (Although now you’ll just have another thing you need to remember to turn off if you’d like to make a solitary beer run un-accosted or without hurting someone’s feelings.) Founder Brett Martin told Betabeat the changes were about realizing that here-now vision. "There’s a lot of people, you know, apps that are telling you there are strangers nearby, or telling you that there is someone who also likes boating around the corner," he said. "And so we’re trying to say, 'How do we build a communications platform to connect and share with the people, you know, firiends and interesting people, here right now.'" The new features are designed to advance that goal, he told us. The status message in particular is "like a tweet, but directed solely at the people nearby," he said. "Twitter and Facebook and platforms like that are terrible platforms for asking, 'Who's around right now? Who wants to grab a drink right now?'" “I think a big problem with this space is relevance. Why?” he added. It's like you're reading our mind, Mr. Martin! Do go on. “Why do I care about getting notifications that some person is around the corner?” His pitch for relevancy? “Sonar is focusing very much on solving real problems,” like coordinating a large group of event attendees, or communicating with coworkers in a large office, he said. Mr. Martin also speculated about a more brand-friendly use case: bands who want to release a special mp3 to concert attendees.

Mr. Klaus, Cofounder and CEO of K2 Labs (facebook.com/dklaus)

The New York tech scene has been flush with news of emerging incubators recently, so it's no surprise that one lucky winner has scored a few mil to help get their projects off the ground.

K2 Labs, "a new model for early stage investing," differentiates itself from the herd by focusing on and healthily funding just a handful of fledgling companies at once. Instead of throwing a ton of new ideas against the wall and seeing which ones stick, K2 funnels its resources into the few startups it believes in, nurturing them until they blossom into mature companies with Ivy League IPOs.

They're the helicopter parents of incubators, if you will.

The people behind K2 Labs are all bigwigs in their own right: cofounder and chairman Kevin Wendle had a hand in founding Fox and E! Online and was named one of Entertainment Weekly's "101 Most Powerful People in Entertainment." He also "helped to launch the careers of Will Smith and Johnny Depp," which we think are critical qualifications for successful incubator execs. Didn’t have a hand in Pirates of the Caribbean? The door is over there, sir (or ma’am)!

Other K2 Labs team members include Music Nation cofounder Daniel Klaus, ex-Limewire engineer Paul Tepper Fisher, and Chris O'Brien, CEO and cofounder of Motionbox.

K2 has three startups on its plate right now: the creepily knowledgeable Sonar, which tells you which of your Foursquare, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter connections are in a room with you; Fingerprint, a "mobile learning and play network" for kids; and Tracks, which allows you to make photo sets called "tracks" to share "social photo stories."

As Mr. Klaus told AllThingsD, "We’re not giving people $25,000 and space to hang out at. We’re really building businesses." No pre-revenue pool table in a sick Manhattan loft? What kind of operation are you running here?

Hook 'em! | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Wikipedia)

HILL COUNTRY. Made in NY: Austin will celebrate New York based tech startups at South by Southwest on March 11 from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. at the Fast Company Grill at Cedar Door in the Texas Capital. The event will be hosted by Gust, and the New York Tech Meetup and will be attended by over 250 NYC based startups. RSVP here. You might even be able to get there in a real NYC yellow taxi.

GroupMe is also heading to Austin for SXSW to keep you connected to your fellow conference-goers. Start a group on the GroupMe SXSW landing page and get exclusive updates, news and a chance to win prizes.

Be sure to RSVP for the GroupMe Major Rager end-of-the-weekend celebration at Cedar Street Courtyard featuring DJ sets from the likes of COMA and Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem.

Pixable is going to SXSW with a special section dedicated to the interactive conference based on what's happening, where you should be and what's most popular "#SXSW Live Feed" is a real time stream of all #SXSW tagged photos on Instagram and Twitter and "#SXSW Popular" is a showcase of the most shared and liked pics.

PIIIIIING. Sonar, the mobile app that shows hidden connections to the people around you based on the information you publicly post online, is going to SXSW with an Android App in beta. And that's not all—new features are also live including a people tab, to show users whose around no matter what the venue may be, Facebook and Twitter location data integration to show more people with more context and the entire app has been reengineered under the hood for improved speed and power.

GIRLS. GirlDevelopIt now has over 2,300 members and will be on hand at SXSW celebrating women in tech with a totally unofficial All Girl* Dev Brunch. The nerdettes also announced that classes in San Francisco are open for enrollment.

*Boys allowed.

ISPs 4 U AND ME. KeyWifi, the disruptive little startup spearheading the effort to bring Internet access to all by sharing hotspots, came out on top at the Silicon Alley Battlefield event at the New York Entrepreneurs Business Network. Betabeat believes uninhibited access to information is a good thing, so it's nice to see KeyWifi win with a refined pitch after struggling to connect with judges at last month's Common Pitch.

TESTING 1-2-3. After over a year of beta testing, Broadcastr 2.0 is available in the iOS app store and in the Android Market. Broadcastr allows users to " find memories, insights, and enriching information about eclectic and everyday places on every continent on Earth." New features include imprived filtering options, a gallery view, curated story collections and more intuitive map browsing.

ADITUDE. Solve Media heard our prayers and has come up with a way around 30 second ads for online videos that are sometimes only half that length. With Solve Media's solution, viewers will be able to type a sponsor's message in a text box to bypass the commercial. Users will be less frustrated and sponsors will know that their message was heard instead of playing to nobody while the intended target is making a sandwich.

CHA-CHING. Covestor, an investment management company that basically lets users see the transactions of pro traders and copy their moves, is joining forces with SlashDeclare, a cooperative movement of financial services companies calling for fairness and transparency in financial markets.

Covestor’s Next Invest, a virtual conference, is set for March 20 and 21 where Charles Lewis Sizemore, of the Sizemore Investment Letter, will talk about "using content to build a money management practice."

LIFE COACH. "It is time for you to stop stalking your exes and start living your life!" proclaims LifeGunk, a startup that touts itself as "the world's first life-management network." LifeGunk allows you to maintain schedules, take notes, log goals on your calendar, and send yourself reminders. When you accomplish one of your goals you can even give yourself a checkmark. Sort of like Google Calendar—but more patronizing. LifeGunk is currently self funded. Investors—get in while you can.

45 RPM. Turntable.fm is rolling out new features including a private chat function, improved search and a guest list so you can see how else is is jimmying to your jams. Best of all, there's a new free iPhone app—gratuitous guitar solo goes here.

MAXIMIZE. Clickable just made some big expansions to their senior leadership team as they plan to continue their rapid growth as a platform that combines search and social across Facebook, Google, Twitter, Foursquare, Bing and LinkedIn. Dave Fall joins Clickable as COO, David O. Smith as CRO, Sanjay Gupta as senior director of engineering and Brian Tucker as the VP of agency sales.

WORK FOR CHANGE. Gawker is looking for a new creative director with coding proficiency. Apply Here. Hyperpublic needs a web developer who's comfy with MongoDB, Javascript and JQuery. Throw your hat into the ring. Betaworks wants a senior backend engineer and architect for contract or full-time. Expertise in Python, Mongo and AWS is preferred. Tell 'em why it should be you. GetGlue, the social network for entertainment, has an opening for a senior product manager with 3-5 years experience and a social media presence. Apply here. Signpost, the "Google AdSense of local commerce," is on the prowl for a new publisher development manager. Strong business acumen and three years of marketing/sales experience gives you a good shot. Shoot. Work Market, a labor and HR management platform, backed by Union Square Ventures, is looking for a back-end Java developer, operations engineer, community manager and many other positions. Check 'em out here. Foursquare has internships for young, budding techies on the software engineering and community fronts. They've also got more than a few job openings. Check it all out here. And last but not least, Boxee wants to pay an intern on their product team. If you're based in NYC apply here.

More fun than jumping into a real blender!

The MoLoSo (mobile local social) space is really heating up. OkCupid recently launched a mobile app to help horny folks find a little local love that they swear is the "anti-Grindr". Betabeat already told you about Bromance, the location based network for "dudes that do". But who better to do the anti- Grindr than the OG of spontaneous celly sex, Grindr!

Today Grindr unveiled what it called the "highly anticipated Prject Amicus", a platonic grindr for straights called Blendr. From the presser:

With Blendr, users can discover new people based on a broad range of interest categories. For example, college students can interact and make new friends on campus and at concerts, while travelers can make new connections abroad, and sports fans can find other fellow enthusiasts.

Users can check-in to venues, browse how many others are at those venues, and determine whether to venture to the trending hot spot. Blendr is integrated with other social networks, directly allowing users to share and update their Blendr activity on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Unlike other social networks that connect users to people and places they already know, Blendr facilitates the discovery of new people and places with secure privacy settings and rich features that give users total control of how they want to connect and interact with others.

Oh wait. This is Sonar. Ok, not the most original thing we've ever seen, but hey, Grindr had staying power and this seems like a feature rich play on the same space as Sonar from someone with a lot of experience making the "meatspace" so damn appealing.

Nihal Mehta

"Things move so fast in the mobile space these days," says Vic Singh, founder of the mobile photo sharing app, Tracks. "I've spent more time as a venture capitalist investing in the space, than I have as an entrepreneur. But the truth is if you're not building something yourself, and seeing what works on the ground, you're going to get left behind."

Tracks is a social publishing service that lets users create and share photos in multiple distinct groups, or tracks. Singh is one of the many residents at Local Response headquarters in Chelsea to wear a number of hats. As a founding partner of ENIAC Ventures, he has also invested in startups like SpotOn, which share the same space and, more recently, the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. "We practiced our pitches on one another and perfected our schwag. Whenever I have a problem, whether its email marketing or my analytics platform, I turn to the other companies in the space."

The desks just a few feet away belong to AppFund, a mobile incubator and seed fund. Brett Martin, founder of Sonar, helped to launch a few companies with this team before leaving to start his own. Sonar, which debuted at Disrupt, eventually became one of three finalists for the grand prize. "We're all in here sort of chewing over the same ideas and that makes for an incredibly productive environment."

Martin points to Nihal Mehta, a partner at ENIAC and founder of Local Response. "My last company was trying to solve the problem that Local Response is working on right now," says Martin. "And my current venture, Sonar, is really looking at a lot of the same issues that Nihal's previous company, Buzzd, was trying to crack."

SpotOn CEO Gauri Manglik says the informal relationship and proximity to her investors is one of the best things about working out of the space. "Having an email relationship with a backer is one thing, but when I have a question for the guys at ENIAC, I just turn around and yell." SpotOn gives users a simple way to rate venues and recommends where to go based on a user's profile and social graph.

Like Betaworks, there is an enormous amount of data and insight being collected in a single place around the theme of mobile location and sharing. "The companies influence each other in some way, shape or form; and completely subconsciously--just from overhearing phone calls or running into common investors," says Nihal Mehta. Issues like the "ghost town" of a young consumer app or the best way to leverage the APIs of big companies become a shared knowledge base. "Mobile is moving at a lighting pace, and when you share a space, you find yourself evolving even faster."

The two New York start-ups involved in the finals, Sonar and BillGuard, shared the second place runner up slot.

GetAround lets users put their car up for rent, then provides insurance and turns users iphone into the key.

Betabeat's intrepid Adrianne Jeffries will be hitting the party scene tonight. Let her know where the action is.