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Tag Archive: zynga

Zynga Continues To Get Bigger And Stronger; Hires Former Facebook, MySpace Exec,Owen Van Natta

Posted August 13, 2010 by Sardar Mohkim Khan

image thumb59 Zynga Continues To Get Bigger And Stronger; Hires Former Facebook, MySpace Exec,Owen Van Natta

There has been quite a lot happening at Zynga, the social gaming giant has grown phenomenally, almost as exponentially as Facebook itself. I don’t mean it has got the same number of users but has definitely grabbed attention. From the Russian DST all the way to Google, who might actually partner with it to boost its own social network aka Facebook Killer. Today Zynga got hold of a pretty experienced individual Owen Van Natta; former facebook Chief Revenue Officer and the CEO of MySpace.

He had been the advisor at Zynga and will also be joining the company’s Board of Directors. Other that that his tasks at Zynga will be to manage business operations which include corporate development, marketing and communications. Van Natta enjoys the reputation of being the top guys in the tech industry and has overseen growth of several startups, a reason big enough for Zynga to fish him.

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Zynga Growing Strong, Eyes To Become The Google OF Games

Posted July 26, 2010 by Sardar Mohkim Khan

image thumb43 Zynga Growing Strong, Eyes To Become The Google OF Games

We will be Google or maybe “We are Google”, such statements coming Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga won’t surprise me now and they won’t surprise me in the future. The social game developer has been more than just successful in the past one year. If I am not wrong, it has grown as exponentially as the social network, Facebook bagging in funds in bulk and pocketing revenue from foreign investors, the major being DST from Russia.

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Farmville Infests Markets Across The US With Farmville Cash! God Save Us!

Posted July 21, 2010 by Sardar Mohkim Khan

image thumb35 Farmville Infests Markets Across The US With Farmville Cash! God Save Us!

Good God save us from the craziness of the virtual activity coming over into real lives. Who would have thought that our attempts to make the virtual world adopt things from real life would actually turn around and in fact influence reality? I am being skeptic? I don’t mind it, but Farmville is trying exactly that – teaming with Green Giant to bring Farmville Cash to around 4,000 stores across the US. Bah! Humbug!

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Zynga Brings Another Ville After Farmville: The Wild West Frontierville

Posted June 11, 2010 by Sardar Mohkim Khan

image thumb36 Zynga Brings Another Ville After Farmville: The Wild West Frontierville

Zynga has made it big with its Farmville madness on Facebook. Involving Russians with their heavy investments in the social gaming company, as well as users who have flocked in to waste countless hours making it worth $4 billion. I guess everyone has played a part in making it what it is and whatever was left, Steve Jobs participated further by announcing its legendary Farmville to the iPhone at the WWDC. The latest news is Frontierville, the Farmville reincarnation with the touch of the Wild West.

It’s not that the game is an imitation alone. The game has been modified, albeit the game play being so familiar to the regular Farmville farmers. For example you can now have control over the other avatars and increase the populous, maintain a reputation to gain more popularity amongst your users.

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Zynga Might Actually Wave Goodbye To Facebook

Posted May 10, 2010 by Sardar Mohkim Khan

image thumb31 Zynga Might Actually Wave Goodbye To Facebook

Facebook and Zynga have a history together. Zynga giving the social network addictive games like Mafia Wars and Farmville and attracting the Russian Investor DST [$180 Million]; to inject massive funds in both itself and Facebook. The couple appeared to be made for each other until now, when rumors are dripping out about Zynga and Facebook heading on for a divorce.

Zynga has given the social network users a reason to keep themselves glued to its games with a series of some-Ville named games and that contribution wasn’t small. As of now, Farmville alone has more than 83 Million users who are very active and that doesn’t count those who are playing Mafia Wars, Petville, etc. The games weren’t only about playing, together with Facebook we were seeing implementation of quite new ideas, like Credits that enabled users to purchase gifts with real money and trade them for numerous items within the game. While all appeared good, I am just surprised what actually made Zynga take a break away?

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God Save Us From Zynga! Farmville Spreads To MSN Games And The Messenger

Posted February 4, 2010 by Sardar Mohkim Khan

image thumb19 God Save Us From Zynga! Farmville Spreads To MSN Games And The Messenger

There you go, I thought Facebook will be the only one being infected by Zynga. Sadly that is not happening as the lead developer of Facebook Apps, like Farmville and many other Ville has shook hands with MSN Games. The result? Well all those Farmville addicts will now be able to play the game via the Games on MSN. More importantly each of these users will be able to connect to the existing 75 million users with the help of Facebook Connect. Bizarre!

While I might be hating all this and to be honest I am maxed out on hate, what’s worth noting here is the fact that with this partnership, the apps destined for Facebook will now have a channel to spread outside the social network. And those will include almost every brand on the Web, including the likes of Yahoo and perhaps even Google. And that’s just Zynga making the jump and the rest are all eager to follow the bandwagon. All this might very well be the result of Microsoft’s ever increasing love for Facebook and plan to work with it in a much closely knit manner, perhaps that way it could monetize the gaming aspect to its own advantage without burdening Facebook with the worry of monetizing content.

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Zynga Wants To Make Most Of Its Dominance On Facebook, Brings Back Engagement Ads And More

Posted January 13, 2010 by Sardar Mohkim Khan

image thumb50 Zynga Wants To Make Most Of Its Dominance On Facebook, Brings Back Engagement Ads And More

When it comes to social games, Zynga is making the most of it thanks to its ever growing popularity on Facebook with addictive games like Farmville and Mafia Wars. It presently has more than 70 million active monthly users and that means loads of revenue, not just from users wasting their precious time but from investors too. And why should it ever lose a penny for any reason there is? This is exactly what its CEO, Mark Pincus had in mind when he restarted Offers across the gaming platform along with more engaging ads.

The initiative is in no way new and had been taken up earlier before it was shut due to scams thanks to the IQ quizzes and God knows that else. That must have been a huge hit on Zynga given that analysts put the revenue from those at over 33% of what it earns in total. While it will obviously be bringing in loads of cash, there is another benefit it would bring for its users. Primarily for those who have difficulties with online payment methods they will have alternatives, much like those abundant on destinations like Gamefly, Book of the Month, etc.

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While RockYou’s Zoo World Continues To Amass Users on Facebook, Zynga Might Bring Its Own Zoo Too

Posted January 1, 2010 by Sardar Mohkim Khan

image While RockYou’s Zoo World Continues To Amass Users on Facebook, Zynga Might Bring Its Own Zoo Too

Apparently the whole Facebook Ville syndrome is taking developers to newer heights. We have been talking about how Zynga has achieved great success with Farmville, Fishville, Petville, etc and it might have been dead serious about a Zooville. But while that name is patented by a pretty unfamiliar name, RockYou is bagging quite a massive share with Zoo World and its user base is increasing rapidly.

Currently Zoo World is hovering at the number two spot on the Facebook Apps list. Surprises me a lot, given that Facebook users already have more than just one addictive game from Zynga and still more than 200,000 users continue to rally in to populate Zoo World. Sounds cool for everyone who is into all these pet, farm things, but from my experience RockYou needs to do a lot with this application, primarily because it has users jumping from one page to another using the application. But then again this application is much richer in user experience compared to Farmville and the likes, which is again one reason why users might enjoy spending time on it.

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Zynga Barks Back: Kill Popup Notifications Facebook And We Will Switch To SMS!

Posted December 23, 2009 by Sardar Mohkim Khan

image thumb118 Zynga Barks Back: Kill Popup Notifications Facebook And We Will Switch To SMS!

Facebook is taking steps to reduce certain things that make Apps on its platform a huge success. We reported one of them earlier as the social network rolled out new rules for Popup on Feed Forms. All this as said previously, will have its toll on the app traffics and I bet larger app developers are going to look for alternative ways to promote themselves and send notifications across as many channels as they can. Welcome Zynga that has been hugely popular with its winner app: Farmville and is now taking the steps for the same.

The social gaming developer today tested SMS notification to users. Meaning that users are being sent notifications from the social network right to their mobile devices. This has been rolled out primarily for the Mafia Wars and all this sums up to be a very good strategy from Zynga, which means it has to rely even less on Facebook. This is quite a bit of a break given that both Zynga and Facebook have been doing a lot for each other, not to mention that they have a common investor, Russian firm DST which has invested heavily in both Zynga (worth $180 Million) and Facebook lately. To be honest, this helps Zynga to be more independent on its own instead of relying so heavily on Facebook for all the promotion via notifications across the social network’s platform, etc.

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Zynga raises $180 million from Russian Investors for Facebook Games

Posted December 16, 2009 by Imran Ahmed Khan

image thumb75 Zynga raises $180 million from Russian Investors for Facebook Games

Zynga, a San Francisco based game maker of popular facebook games such as FarmVille, Café World and Mafia Wars, has raised $180 million in a new round of funding – according to NY Times. The round was led by Moscow based Digital Sky Technologies (DST). The Russian based digitial investment firm has previously invested $200 million in Facebook.

The investment is structured similar to that of DST’s investment in Facebook, whereby DST invested directly into Facebook and also bought stocks from Facebook employees. Similarly Zynga employees will get a chance to sell their shares to DST, allowing them to cash out before the IPO.

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