Tag Archives: Zynga
Zynga Answers Questions About Whether OMGPOP Acquisition Was Worth It
When Zynga acquired OMGPOP back in March, “Draw Something” was hitting 3,000 drawings per second. OMGPOP’s “Draw Something” was the most downloaded application and the highest grossing. However their position has dropped to #18 and now the app has 7.6 million daily active users versus the 14.5 million that they were seeing before. Zynga is preparing to sign a deal with animation studio DreamWorks Animation to place ads into the game though. Zynga believes that this is the start of new revenue-generating possibilities. This is important for the company because their stock has dropped to nearly half in the past two months, primarily because of their dependence on Facebook.
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Categories Draw Something, OMGPOP, Zynga
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New American Express Prepaid Debit Card To Reward Users With FarmVille Cash
American Express and Zynga have partnered on creating a new prepaid debit card that rewards users with a rewards program. The users would be able to earn virtual currency when spending money in the real world in a way that similar to consumers earning free airline miles for every dollar spent on an airline miles card. The rewards will start with FarmVille and it will eventually be expanded to CityVille and CastleVille.
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Categories American Express, Farmville, Zynga
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Zynga’s Stock Gets Hammered After Facebook IPO
On Friday when Facebook had their IPO, Zynga took a massive hit on the stock market. Since Facebook’s stock did not do too well on opening day, Zynga’s stock fell 13% before they suspended trading. They were able to recover when the stock was down 5.5% before they suspended trading again. Then it finished at 13% down for the day.
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Categories Facebook, Zynga
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Twenty Percent Of Zynga’s Traffic Handled By Amazon
Before Zynga launched FarmVille in 2009, they did not have much trouble dealing with servers. When the game really gained popularity on Facebook, the company had a hard time maintaining their servers. “We couldn’t get power fast enough. We couldn’t get servers fast enough. We just couldn’t scale our infrastructure to match the needs of FarmVille,” stated Zynga CTO of infrastructure Allan Leinwand in an interview with Ars Technica. Zynga became dependent on Amazon’s cloud services to keep things running smoothly, but eventually they had to build their own data centers to have more control of their infrastructure. Zynga’s own data centers now handle 80% of their gamers and the remaining 20% is run by Amazon. Zynga would not have been able to scale without Amazon’s help like when Alec Baldwin revealed that he was addicted to “Words With Friends.”
Categories Allan Leinwand, Amazon, Amazon.com, Words With Friends, Zynga
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Draw Something Starts Losing 5 Million Users Per Month
The app Draw Something may have seen their best days since being acquired by Zynga. OMGPOP’s Draw Something skyrocketed and became a top Apple game for about a month or so before social game powerhouse Zynga acquired them for $200 million. According to a new report, Draw Something has lost almost 5 million daily active users. This brings Draw Something down to 10 million from 15 million. Earlier this month Zynga found a creative way to monetize Draw Something. They encouraged users to draw pictures that are related to certain brands like Doritos, Pepsi, and The Avengers.
Categories Draw Something, OMGPOP, Zynga
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Zynga Monetizing Draw Something With “Draw This Brand”
Zynga has come up with a clever way to monetize “Draw Something,” the mobile game developed by OMGPOP. Zynga has announced a new game called “Draw This Brand” within the app. You pick a word from a list of three and then create a drawing so a Facebook friend can guess what it is. If they get it right, you win points. The words may include Colonel Sanders or Doritos. The NHL was one of the first ads and they bought terms related to hockey like puck, Zamboni, hat trick, and slap shot.
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Categories Draw Something, National Hockey League, NHL, OMGPOP, Zynga
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Zynga Is Sitting On $1.8 Billion In Cash
Zynga recently went public and now they are sitting on a cash pile of $1.8 billion. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and M&A chief Barry Cottle told Bloomberg that they are looking for the next OMGPOP and they plan to do several big deals of the next few years.
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Categories Barry Cottle, Mark Pincus, Zynga
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Zynga CEO: I Think Failing Is The Best Way To Keep You Grounded
Mark Pincus is an inspiration to startup entrepreneurs that are in the social gaming market. He recently had a conversation with Brad Stone at BusinessWeek to discuss how his shortcomings made him the man he is today.
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Categories Mark Pincus, Zynga
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OMGPOP Makes Zynga’s Daily User Traffic Go Up 25%
Late last month, Zynga acquired OMGPOP, the makers of “Draw Something.” Now Zynga’s total daily active user base is up 25%. About 14.6 million people are actively playing Draw Something per day, which gets added on top of Zynga’s existing 55 million players.
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Categories OMGPOP, Zynga
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Zynga Acquires “Draw Something” Game Developer OMGPOP
Zynga has acquired OMGPOP, the game developer behind the popular Pictionary-like game for mobile devices called “Draw Something.” Draw Something has been downloaded over 30 million times and every second, three thousand people draw something in 84 countries in the world.
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Categories OMGPOP, Zynga
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