It Girl maker CrowdStar raises $23 million for mobile, global and... elsewhere?

Have you ever found a $1 bill in your pocket doing laundry and felt pretty swell about it? Well, CrowdStar is feeling 23 million times that, as the fourth-place social game developer just raised $23 million in funding. The hefty cash injection comes from investments from Intel, Time Warner and Chinese games company The9, TechCrunch reports. Before this, CrowdStar became the fourth largest Facebook game developer on just $100 thousand in funding. This is extremely impressive considering Playdom, owned by Disney, is only the fifth most popular.

CEO Peter Relan already knows what he wants to do with the now-massive wallet: expand, expand, expand. CrowdStar will likely make use of its new found friendship in China to expand to Eastern markets, which already bring in 50 percent of its traffic. Then, it's off iOS and later Android, a smart move considering the strides Zynga, EA and Playfish are making already in that space. Better yet, Relan already told TechCrunch that this wallet fattening will allow him to double the CrowdStar staff to 200. (Those of you looking for work in the industry, here's your golden ticket.)