Social game leader of the pack Zynga has recently landed yet another influx of cash. This time however, the majority of the investment is coming from Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies. If this name sounds vaguely familiar, you might remember them as a $200 million investor in Facebook. They’re also the same firm that we covered less than a month ago with their $5 million investment in a homegrown social strategy game and gaming platform.
If you’ve not been keeping score, and admittedly in this blister paced market, it can be quite a challenge, Zynga is currently the king of social gaming on Facebook. They’re the makers of FarmVille, arguably the one that started the farming craze, which launced in June and counts 72.9 million active monthly users. And while this number alone is enough to make any investor sit up and take notice, Zynga also stables Mafia Wars, FishVille, YoVille, Café World, and Texas HoldEm Poker. Combined, Zynga’s active monthly usage amounts to a massive 232 million. To put that in perspective, there are only three countries on the planet (China, India, and the United States) that are larger.
Looking at Zynga in the overall social gaming space, again, they’re clearling leading the pack. The second largest player on the Facebook gaming page is Playfish, which counts 59 million users. Obviously nothing to sneeze at, but when compared to Zynga – peanuts. Playfish was recently acquired by EA, as the traditional games giant is seeking to make a shift towards current market preferences.
And while massive numbers are good, many, if not all, investors in social gaming have recollections of a former internet boom that was fueled by views, and never bothered to look at the solid bottom line. Fast forward 10 (or so) years, and it looks like both investors and startups have learned a lesson. Zynga is not only covering their costs, but bringing home the bacon – in loads. While on paper, it seems like free-to-play gaming in general wouldn’t make sense. Giving games away and waiting for players to make a microtransaction purchase wouldn’t have been a solid solution pre-social gaming explosion days. However, rumors are circulating that Zynga’s 2009 revenues are pushing the $250 million mark. The company employs either full time or part time 712 employees and is constantly growing.
Again, these figures are enough to make any investor take notice, and it’s clear that Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies is clearly putting it’s vote of confidence into the social networking/gaming area.
With respect to the new investment, Zynga’s founder and CEO Mark Pincus commented to the New York Times, “The opportunity every quarter is proving to be bigger than we imagined and we always thought it was prudent to keep adding to the capital of the company as we grow.”
“Our original seven day trial has been very successful so far,” says Morten Larssen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Funcom. “But with the holiday season coming up this is the perfect time to shake up our trial offer a bit and try out something new. So everyone who downloads the trial before January 1st will be able to play the first part of the game for free, forever. We are confident that many of those taking advantage of this offer will choose to become permanent players, allowing them to experience all of what the game has to offer including all the additions and improvements introduced since launch.”
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If Giles’ most recent position didn’t warrant enough street cred, he also served as Execvutive Director of Technology at Turbine, where he oversaw core development projects, operations, IT, and Biz Dev efforts for Asheron’s Call, DDO, and LotRO. And rounding out the ‘Wow, this guy’s been a major player in a lot of stuff’ category, from 2003-2006, Giles filled the role of Director of Platform Technology at Sony Online Entertainment, meaning he was deeply involved in development and technology efforts in titles including EverQuest, EverQuest2, Star Wars Galaxies, The Matrix Online, and Planetside.
The survey found that the most popular method of monetizing Flash games is still rooted in in-game advertising. The majority (58 percent) of respondents indicated that they use in-game advertising as their primary monetization method, with sponsorships taking second place at 43 percent. Licensing held down third place with 26 percent, and web site ads landed in forth with 20 percent. Monetization via microtransactions scored dead last in developers methods, garnering only 6 percent.
Stemming from the 
This information is still ‘rumored’, but sources on both sides of the fence have given the proverbial nod and smile when asked about it. Traditionally, the two friend destination sites have been bitter rivals, competing tooth and nail for number of registered users, activity on the site, etc.. However, 2009 has seen a rapid cooling off between the two, and Facebook has clearly won out, and is now kind of the social networking hill. Assorted news and rumors started appearing back in October with the U.K. Telegraph news outlet 
To say that Friendster’s had a long and winding road might be the understatement of the decade. Founded in 2002, the original social network ruled the internets for a short while, but was quickly taken over by MySpace and Facebook. At least in the U.S. market – as Friendster ended up finding a home in the most unlikely of places, Asia. Currently, while numbers are paltry in the U.S., Friendster enjoys 50 + million users in the Asian market (over half the networks total number of users).
What makes the statement remarkable, is that Riccitiello sits as the man in charge of the world’s largest video game developer – a firm that’s traditionally focused on pricey, glossy boxed, console focused games. However, Riccitiello took the interview time to point out that projects have been afoot at EA for a while now, almost predicting the coming tide.
