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Mobile marketing platform PlayHaven released new tools today to help app developers maximize the success of their mobile games. Oftentimes game developers will enter their games into an app store and see an initial spike of traffic only to see downloads and engagement flat line over time. PlayHaven believes it has the tools to help developers maintain traffic numbers for an extended period of time.

PlayHaven is also announcing that they have signed one of the biggest game development companies, Glu, to use the platform. Glu makes some of the most popular games for Android and iOS including Gun Bros and Eternity Warriors. PlayHaven's new dynamic overlay tools and analytics could help games like that stay in the top of app store rankings.

Music streaming service Spotify is opening up development tools to iOS developers which will allow them to write tools for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Spotify functionality will now become available for integration into any iOS app and will be able bring the music services library of 15 million tracks to a variety of applications.

The new coding options could spread Spotify far and wide in the application ecosystem. It is the mobile equivalent of being able to put a radio widget into a website. The service, called libspotify, is available for Spotify Premium users and developers starting today.

Competition is about to get red hot between Facebook, Twitter and the soon-to-launch Google Plus Application Programming Interface (API). Yesterday's launch of Google Plus Games was the first instance of 3rd party apps built on the platform being released to the public and that announcement was accompanied by the launch of a new official blog that Google will use to communicate with what it says are tens of thousands of developers who have expressed interest in its platform.

Facebook responded within hours with very public updates to its Games platform. Meanwhile, Twitter is adding features fast and bulking up its developer team with high profile hires of trailblazers who've led developer programs at Facebook, Google and Yahoo in the past. What can Google Plus do to compete for the hearts and focus of platform developers? We asked on Google Plus and the responses we got were quite clear.

While handling backend data for mobile development is a challenge that many startups are addressing this year, content management systems are also a service that many developers would like to outsource to an easy-to-use third-party company. This is where cloud-based "backend as a service" startups branch, from either handling data, computing resources or managing content. If you need a backend service provided, there are a variety of startups lining up to take the job.

That is where a German startup called StorageRoom comes into play. The company has created a cloud-based CMS that devices can interact through with a RESTful JSON API. The idea is to cut programmers out of the content loop so they can do what they do best while editors handle content issues.

The most recent trend in app development has been "backend as a service." Companies and startups have recognized the need of the average developer for support when it comes to server stacks and storage, data migration middleware managements. These services make possible things like authentication, push notifications, in-app purchases and other services that consumers take for granted.

There are a lot of new back-end services available, from the purist startups (Parse and Kinvey) to those approaching their second round venture rounds like StackMob and established services like appMobi. Which one makes developers lives the easiest? What is the most cost effective? Vote on your favorite in this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

Most mobile developers have a creative side to their application styling. They also have the knowledge of common codes such as Python or Java to be able to turn their imaginations into colorful apps for the world to interact with. Yet, application building is not that simple. There are backend servers, codes and stacks to deal with that the average developer probably only has a rudimentary knowledge of how to navigate. These are technical, not creative, problems. Enter: Parse.

Parse offers native iOS and Android software developer kits (SDKs) that help developers integrate with cloud services. It is in the current Y-Combinator batch and is founded by Tikhon Bernstam and James Yu, who were co-founders at Scribd along with Ilya Sukhar (Ooyala) and Kevin Lacker (Google). Parse is the latest offering in a new trend in the developer ecosystem - backend as a service - that is lowering the bar for mobile application development.

AppMobi has launched a new "XDK," which allows developers to build HTML5-optimized applications for the Web or for mobile platforms. The resulting code can be used to deliver great HTML5 applications, like those found in Chrome's Web app store, but it can also be used in hybrid apps submitted to Apple's App Store or the Android Market.

The XDK itself is a Web app, and is available in the Chrome Web app Store for free.

A company called iSpeech has launched a free voice recognition and text-to-speech SDK for mobile developers building apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. During its pre-launch phase, iSpeech saw over 3,000 developers sign up for its service and powered 1 billion conversions in the cloud. Incidentally, 3,000 developers is the same number that Nuance, makers of the paid Dragon SDK, recently advertised themselves, says iSpeech's CMO Yaron Oren. But that was after significant marketing efforts over the course of 6 months, he added.

The price of the Dragon SDK is a barrier to entry for many developers and businesses, the company believes. iSpeech wants to be the more affordable alternative.

Mobile application developers believe that Google's new social network Google Plus will have more impact on mobile growth and adoption than Apple's iCloud, or even iOS 5's Twitter integration. This is just one of the fascinating findings related to Google Plus revealed within the results of a new developer survey led by mobile cloud platform provider Appcelerator and analyst firm IDC. Together, the two companies had surveyed 2,012 app developers to better understand their take on current and future mobile trends.

Appcelerator & IDC's new mobile developer survey is out now, with details on a wide range of development trends including platform choice, developers' future plans and mobile industry challenges. Notably, the companies have now added HTML5 as a new option to rank among mobile development platforms, and its middle-of-road showing indicates that mobile websites are increasingly a complementary requirement for today's mobile developers.

Meanwhile, despite seeing a slight jump back to Q1 levels of interest, Android tablets remain a platform with a number of challenges, developers report. Explains Appcelerator, these tablets are in somewhat of a "no-man's land" in terms of developer priorities right now, as developers aren't sure what to make of the overall Android Tablet picture.