Fliplife gets 7-figure investment for its browser-based virtual world

United Prototype, the German browser-based gaming company behind Fliplife, has closed a second round of funding after their original seed round last year. The new ‘7 figure’ investment comes from existing investors HighTech Gründerfonds and Rapidshare Entertainment (the venture arm of prominent file host Rapidshare), and new partners Mountain Super Angels and United Prototype Ventures, the investment vehicle of founders Bachem, Evsan and other executives. The additional funding will be invested in product development and international expansion.

Fliplife sits somewhere at the intersection of a traditional browser-based game and a Zynga-like social gaming platform. With deep Facebook integration, the service exploits a user’s social graph. Apart from making money off virtual goods, the realistic approach of the game design also entails B2B products, where real-life companies can enter the world of Fliplife in the form of product placement and a virtual presence.

Sounds familiar? Second Life, a pioneer of virtual worlds, also offered such services to its business customers with limited long term success.

According to Founder and CEO Ibrahim Evsan, Fliplife has more than 100,000 users from 10 different countries building a virtual existence and companies are already eager to place their brands within the virtual environment. Being coded purely in HTML5 and shunning Flash, it seems likely that the game will soon expand to mobile devices.