Games and gambling and social media are combining in profitable new ways:

Crowdpark, a startup developer focused on social betting games, today announced investments totaling about $6 million from Target Partners and existing investor Earlybird Venture Capital. This brings the Berlin-based company’s total amount of funding to approximately $8 million. Waldemar Jantz, partner at Target Partners, will also join the board of Crowdpark.

The funding will be used to enhance the technology, develop cross-platform, create new games, and hire more talent in game design and development.

Crowdpark products offer players the opportunity to bet on real life events in sports, entertainment, business, politics and other topics, and to compete against each other in betting events, using virtual currency. Since the game runs in real time, players can change their bet at any time, as the event or news unfolds.

The company said this is made possible by its patented dynamic betting technology that enables forecasts in social gaming in real-time “similar to how people play the stock market.”

— Chris Marlowe @ dmwmedia.com