VentureBeat |
- Timeline: A chronology of the life of Zynga
- From castles to card games: a rundown of Zynga’s biggest titles
- Lightbox takes mobile pic sharing a step further with Tumblr-like photo journals
- iPad 3 is just months away; hold off on that holiday purchase
- Kaggle launches competition to help Microsoft Kinect learn new gestures
- Samsung sold more than 300M phones in 2011
- Modern Warfare 3 sells $1B in just 16 days
- Mac App Store surpasses 100M downloads — Not bad, Apple
- How Zynga grew from gaming outcast to $9 billion social game powerhouse
- Kindle Fire update coming in less than two weeks, fixes performance, multitouch issues
- Disney’s Playdom launches social game Gardens of Time on iPad
- Cloud testing service Soasta secures another $12M in funding
- In omninous retrospective, Anonymous warns, “Prepare for 2012″
- E-commerce sales hit $25B, up 15 percent
- Comedian Louis CK offers $5 DRM-free special, gives the finger to traditional distribution
| Timeline: A chronology of the life of Zynga Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:39 AM PST
Founded by Mark Pincus (pictured right) in 2007, Zynga has has packed an interesting and colorful history into its four and a half years. Here’s our chronology of the life of Zynga. Dec. 12, 2011 — CastleVille hits 30 million users and Zynga has five of the top five games on Facebook. Dec. 8, 2011 — Zynga bets on Google TV with new Texas HoldEm Poker app. Dec. 6, 2011 — Vostu settles copyright infringement case with Zynga. Dec. 2, 2011 — Zynga prices IPO in range at $8.50 to $10 a share at $8.9 billion valuation. That was lower than the expected $15 billion to $20 billion. Nov. 21, 2011 — Zynga’s CastleVille hits 5 million daily active users; Zynga has 206.8 million monthly active users and more than 2,500 employees. Nov. 17, 2011 — Owen Van Natta steps down as Zynga’s chief business officer, but stays on board at the company. Zynga discloses it acquired 15 companies in 2011. Nov. 14, 2011 — Zynga launches CastleVille; Best Buy launches FarmVille plush toys. Nov. 10, 2011 — Wall Street Journal reports Zynga leans on some workers to surrender pre-IPO shares. Nov. 7, 2011 — Bloomberg reports Zynga eyes post-Thanksgiving IPO. Nov. 4, 2011 — Zynga reports profit growth slowing; Net income is $12.5 million in third quarter ended Sept. 30, down 54 percent from a year ago. Revenue was $307 million, up 80 percent. Nov. 3, 2011 — Zynga describes its upcoming CastleVille game.
Oct. 13, 2011 — Zynga says it will trade on Nasdaq as ZNGA once it goes public. Oct. 12, 2011 — Raptr reveals The Sims Social has stolen millions of players from Zynga. Oct. 11, 2011 — Zynga says it will launch 10 new games in services at a press conference at its new San Francisco headquarters. The company announces Hidden Chronicles, CastleVille, Mafia Wars Shakedown, Project Z, and Mafia Wars 2 on Google+. Zynga also unveils Zynga Direct, a new way of distributing games. Sept. 30 2011 — Year-to-date revenue hits $828.8 million and year-to-date net income is $30.7 million. Sept. 29, 2011 — Zynga announces Enrique Iglesias promotion in CityVille. Sept. 26, 2011 — Zynga launches CityVille, its most popular game, on Google+. Sept. 20, 2011 — Zynga launches Hanging With Friends on Android. Zynga announces Mafia Wars 2.
Sept. 8, 2011 — Adventure World launches. Aug. 26, 2011 — Zynga gives 70 times more voting power to CEO Mark Pincus. Aug. 24, 2011 — Zynga adds game card distributors in Europe and Turkey. Aug. 21, 2011 — Zynga hires EA’s Jeff Karp as sales and marketing chief. Aug. 16, 2011 — Zynga buys Astro Ape game studio. Aug. 12, 2011 — Zynga launches Pioneer Trail add-on for FrontierVille. Aug. 11, 2011 — At Google’s social network games debut, Zynga launches poker game on Google+. Aug. 1, 2011 — Zynga launches Words With Friends on Facebook. July 25, 2011 — Zynga to take version of CityVille to Tencent’s network in China. July 12, 2011 — Filing reveals minority investors Google, Peter Thiel, Softbank, and others. EA buys PopCap games for $750 million. PopCap reportedly turned down a higher offer of $950 million from Zynga. July 8, 2011 — Zynga buys Five Mobile in Toronto, its 15th acquisition in 13 months. Filed under: dev, games, mobile, social        
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| From castles to card games: a rundown of Zynga’s biggest titles Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:30 AM PST
Zynga is the most recognizable name in social gaming. Facebook members and iPhone owners alike have seen Zynga’s games continuously rise and fall from the top of the charts over the past few years, and with CastleVille’s launch earlier this month, it is unlikely that will change any time soon. The company is likely to go public soon and raise a ton of money, so we thought we would show this primer on Zynga’s social games so everyone can see what the fuss is all about. These simple, time-consuming titles have taken the world by storm, bringing in hundreds of millions of users internationally since Zynga’s beginning in 2007.
CastleVille Let’s begin with the most recent, and fastest growing, Zynga game – CastleVille, released on November 14, 2011. CastleVille follows closely in the footsteps of the other graphical ‘Ville games, focusing on maintaining a kingdom while fighting off monsters called Beasties and exploring the overwhelming Gloom that has swept over the land. The only way to advance into the Gloom is by increasing your Castle Level, which requires actions such as building protective walls. As your character levels up, more buildings, tools and perks become available. Given its medieval oeuvre, CastleVille feels a little more like an RPG than previous outings, which might draw in some of the social game detractors and those who have tired of the repetitive formula of Zynga’s recent games. CastleVille aims to be yet another resounding success for the prolific company, and as we have reported previously, this title has surpassed CityVille as the fastest growing launch for a Zynga game yet. As of Dec. 12, CastleVille has 30 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to AppData.
Mafia Wars 2 If any of the Zynga Facebook games warranted a sequel, it had to be Mafia Wars. Mafia Wars 2 launched on October 10th, and this follow-up to one of the most infamous of Zynga’s arsenal of games completely overhauls the text- and menu-based original to keep it in line with the current generation of graphics and combat-fueled ‘Ville games. Of course, the sentiment is the same: make money, expand your turf, earn street cred and don’t get shot (too much). The Bone Yard is a nice addition for those feeling the need to take out their aggression on tiny avatars of other players. The recent Zynga games (like many of the older Zynga games) have a specific formula to them, which might be why a game about gangsters feels strikingly similar to a game about medieval kingdoms and another game about a burgeoning empire on a group of islands. Regardless, Mafia Wars 2 is still bringing in over 11.3 million users a month, hanging in there as one of Zynga’s 10 most played games on Facebook.
Empires & Allies Empires & Allies is one of the first of the genre-specific Facebook games by Zynga, and was released on June 1 of this year. It follows in the footsteps of CityVille and FarmVille in terms of resource management, but the story and combat are reminiscent of real-time strategy games. Players must lead an army against the villainous Raven to regain the glory of their nation. You are initially given a small island in which to militarize and begin your siege on the enemy, but expansion is encouraged as more islands open up. It’s the first real Zynga game where combat is the core game mechanic. But the cartoon style is meant to appeal to more than hardcore gamers. This military-centric ‘Ville also offers a relatively robust player vs. player option for those looking to show off their impressive armies. You can choose to invade other players’ islands in order to take over some of their production and gain extra cash. Empires & Allies maintains 18.2 million members, all of whom can’t help but continue the battle.
CityVille Happy birthday to Zynga’s CityVille. Released on Dec. 2, 2010, the title is Zynga’s most popular game, consistently bringing in the most users of any Facebook game. In CityVille, players start off with a small plot of land to populate with houses and farms, growing in level and collecting rent until they can expand their land and their city alike. As you can tell from the screen above, investment in CityVille certainly pays off visually, with sweeping skyscrapers and crowded streets covering the terrain. This socialized SimCity might not have quite as many gameplay elements as Empires & Allies or CastleVille, but the scope of progression and the grandeur of the cities has clearly grasped millions of players and refuses to let go. Even a full year after its release, CityVille receives over 49.7 million players every month. In other words, this is the biggest Facebook game of all time, and that title won’t be wrested from CityVille’s hands easily.
The Pioneer Trail (FrontierVille) Another ‘Ville in the vein of FarmVille, FrontierVille, released on June 9, 2010, plops players in the midst of the Old West, tasked with fending for themselves among the wilderness. If you weren’t paying close enough attention, you might have mistaken this for FarmVille with a slightly anachronistic paint job, and you wouldn’t be too far off. Players farm, plant crops, raise animals, and basically complete FarmVille tasks in a new setting. Lo and behold, over a year after its launch, Zynga decided to revamp FrontierVille with a new plot, new gameplay elements, and even a new name. The Pioneer Trail was born. This time, although the core FarmVille mechanics remain for those who prefer the Wild West to a modern farm, there is a fully fleshed out adventure players can embark on with three friends (NPCs or other players). This mode breaks the mold of Zynga’s other social games, with cutscenes, non-player characters, and even an ending, but it doesn’t stray too far from its roots in terms of actual gameplay. The Pioneer Trail is still inhabited by over 5.6 million monthly users.
Possibly usurping the Wars and the ‘Villes as the most recognizable Zynga property, Words With Friends was not actually designed by the company. Newtoy, Inc. was bought by Zynga after the release of both Chess With Friends and Words With Friends, released in July 2009. But Words fits rather well here in the middle of rundown considering Zynga’s very first title, Zynga Poker. Zynga’s acquisition of the With Friends series complements their original poker title perfectly, even more so now that Zynga Casino is on the way. Words With Friends is basically online Scrabble with fantastic Facebook integration and simple asynchronous gameplay. Players can start a game with a random opponent or with a friend, either by username or Facebook handle. The game can be played at whatever pace the players choose, and multiple games can be played at once. The game still brings in over 12.3 million users a month. Earlier this year, Zynga With Friends (formerly Newtoy, Inc.) released their third title Hanging With Friends, another iOS success.
FarmVille If FarmVille succeeded in anything (other than making gobs of cash), it helped break down the wall between gamers and non-gamers. Nearly everyone with a Facebook account planted some corn and raised a few chickens since FarmVille’s release on June 19, 2009, regardless of gender or age. Plus, the basic farming mechanics of FarmVille have appeared in several of the more recent Zynga games, further proving the basic formula’s longevity. FarmVille was Zynga’s first break0ut hit. FarmVille might be the most simplistic of the ‘Villes. Players own a small farm in which they must plant crops, raise animals…and that’s pretty much it. As players complete these tasks, their level increases and more animals and crops become available to purchase. If you have any neighbors, you can visit their farms and help fertilize their crops and harvest the milk from their cows. Incredibly, FarmVille still rakes in a crowd of over 30 million farmers a month, right behind its graphically superior successor, CityVille. FarmVille recently passed up The Sims Social to become the second-largest game on Facebook again.
YoVille The father of the ‘Villes, YoVille, launched in May 2008, took a page from The Sims’ book and gave us a home to decorate and reside in, along with a static town to explore. This is yet another of Zynga’s purchases, one that later spurred them to continue the top-down, avatar creation, social games such as FarmVille and CityVille. YoVille is much simpler than Zynga’s successive games, mainly focusing on being social with other players’ avatars rather than reaching certain goals. With all the new properties Zynga has introduced over the past few years, YoVille shows its age. The graphics and lack of any real gameplay might turn off new players, but the game still brings in over 2 million users a month, quite an impressive feat for a game as old as this.
Mafia Wars Mafia Wars is the social game that started it all. No Facebook user has managed to escape at least one or two requests to join the Mafia since this game’s launch in early 2008. Mafia Wars, unlike most of Zynga’s more recent titles, including Mafia Wars 2, is a browser based game as opposed to a graphics based one. Players have a limited amount of rechargeable health, stamina, and energy with which to complete tasks and fight other players. Fighting stats are another factor determining which player is more likely to win in a fight. Throughout its lifetime, Mafia Wars has increased in size by adding cities, which serve as expansion packs of sorts. Some of these cities have remained a permanent part of the game, but others, such as Moscow and Bangkok, were only around for a limited time. The original Mafia Wars, despite the introduction of its sequel, still has over 3.2 million users a month.
Of course, before Zynga invaded our social networks and mobile phones with farms, mafias, cities and castles, there was Zynga Poker, launched in July 2007. To this day, it remains one of the most played Zynga apps, with almost 29.6 million users every month. This is one of the most popular online poker games of all time. It functions like most other Texas Hold ‘Em games, but as with most of Zynga’s titles, players have the ability to level up. Leaderboards allow friends to compete for better rankings and everyone has the option to send gifts to their friends as well. The game is available in a multitude of languages across nearly every platform imaginable, and it was recently announced that Zynga Poker would become part of a bigger Zynga franchise: Zynga Casino. All we know for now is that Zynga Poker and Zynga Bingo will be included in this package. Conclusion Zynga is a dominating force in today’s social gaming market. Despite the controversy and the shrinking profits, no one can deny the effect Zynga has had on gamers and (previously) non-gamers alike. These might be 10 of the most recognizable Zynga titles, but here are some of the others which still garner millions and millions of fans every month, including Zynga’s latest mobile titles: Adventure World, Blackjack, Café World, Dream Zoo, Drop 7, FishVille, PetVille, Scramble, Treasure Isle, Vampire Wars, Chess With Friends, Mafia Wars Free, CityVille Hometown, Word Scramble, Hanging With Friends, Drop 7, and Word Twist. Filed under: games        
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| Lightbox takes mobile pic sharing a step further with Tumblr-like photo journals Posted: 12 Dec 2011 09:05 AM PST
Lightbox’s original app let you instantly snap, enhance, and automatically upload photos to the Lightbox website and other services. The company’s new photo journal feature — accessible through the new version 2.0 Lightbox app launching today — takes that a step further by automatically grouping together photos in a personal timeline. So, for example, you won’t need to worry about tagging or sorting all the photos you took during a friend’s birthday party — Lightbox will automatically do that for you, leaving you free to enjoy the party. The resulting photo journal vaguely resembles something you’d see from popular blogging service Tumblr. Even more like Tumblr (and Twitter), Lightbox now allows you to follow other users’ photo journals and vice versa. Lightbox’s photo journals can be made entirely public, private, or unlisted (accessible only by visiting a specific link). Check out William Shepherd and Koneko Darling’s Lightbox pages for examples. The feature gives Lightbox a major advantage over Instagram, which is only available on the iPhone at the moment and which goes to great lengths to keep its network locked down on its mobile app. Individual photos uploaded through Instagram can be viewed on the web, but it’s difficult to do seemingly simple things outside of the app, like view all of the photos from a single user. (Third-party services like Webstagram make this possible with Instagram.) PicPlz, a competing photo sharing app available on both Apple’s iOS and Android, lets you easily explore photos from its users, but it lacks the automatic organization of Lightbox’s photo journals. Lightbox is also launching a new HTML5 mobile site, which is accessible via the iPhone and other smartphones. You can’t upload photos via the mobile sites, which means iOS users will still need to hold out for a Lightbox app of their own. But the iOS version of the app is less than six months away, Thai Tran, Lightbox co-founder and CEO, tells VentureBeat. Lightbox launched on Android in June and is approaching 1 million downloads, Tran tells VentureBeat. In comparison, PicPlz, which launched a year and a half ago, has somewhere between 1 to 5 million downloads, according to the Android Market. Lightbox is also around 10 times as popular on Android as Path, which started out as a photo sharing app for your closest friends. London-based Lightbox has raised $1.2 million so far from Index Ventures, Accell Partners, SV Angel, and others. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| iPad 3 is just months away; hold off on that holiday purchase Posted: 12 Dec 2011 08:45 AM PST
The news comes from Taiwanese blog Digitimes, which has previously picked up accurate news from sources in Apple's supply chain. The report states that iPad 2 production will remain high (14 to 15 million units) in the fourth quarter of 2011, but will decline to under 5 million units in January 2012 to focus on building iPad 3 units. The report also indicates that iPad manufacturer Foxconn Electronics is expected to produce just under 10 million iPad 3 units in the first quarter of 2012. That number would be comparable to the total number of iPad 2 units currently being assembled. VentureBeat previously reported that iPad 3 production would begin prior to 2012, with a launch coming soon after. The new information is more aligned to Apple’s past iPad launches, which have been announced roughly about the same time during the last two years. But the first-quarter-2012 timing assumes Apple has resolved possible issues with a new retina display. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Kaggle launches competition to help Microsoft Kinect learn new gestures Posted: 12 Dec 2011 08:23 AM PST
Big data startup Kaggle just launched a machine learning competition to develop an algorithm that Kinect can use to learn to recognize a new gesture from a single example. There are cash prizes of $10,000 for the top algorithms, and Microsoft may pay up to $200,000 to license them. Let’s say you want to use a new gesture to control video editing software. Show Kinect a chopping gesture once and using the new algorithm it should recognize that gesture in future. You can then map the new gesture to, for example, the “cut” feature. Adding new gestures currently involves a considerable amount of manual work. Kaggle runs Big Data challenges, which involve developing new machine learning algorithms or finding useful patterns in large data sets. “Gesture technology is not a mature area,” said Kaggle’s president and chief scientist Jeremy Howard. While learning from a single example, or “one-shot-learning”, is not an new problem in the machine learning world, “It’s not solved well enough,” Howard explained. The competition is not specifically for gaming applications. The algorithm could be used for tasks like interpreting sign language, controlling robots or appliances or recognizing when a patient in a hospital room is in distress. Each application has its own vocabulary of gestures, which is what makes it important that Kinect can learn them rather than have to be programmed explicitly for each gesture. Competitors get a set of videos clips showing examples of gestures (one example of each gesture) that they use to develop their algorithm. The gestures come from different vocabularies such as diving signals and American Sign Language. During development, the algorithm can be tested on a set of 1-5 examples of each learned gesture to see how well it performs at recognizing them. A final set of data, the validation set, can be used by competitors to evaluate their progress and compare their work with others. A real-time leaderboard shows participants their current standing based on their validation set predictions. “Winners are generally not domain experts but machine learning experts,” said Howard. He should know. Before he became its president, Howard was Kaggle’s most successful competitor. Kaggle is popular with data scientists not only as a way of proving their skill but also because Kaggle gives them access to new data sets that are otherwise hard to find. Kaggle’s community of data scientists comprises thousands of PhDs from quantitative fields such as computer science, statistics, econometrics, maths and physics. “We often have people working on 2-3 competitions at the same time,” said Howard. Kaggle has already had a couple of big wins. A competition run by NASA and the European Space Agency resulted in a 350 percent improvement on the existing algorithms for mapping dark matter. Insurance company Allstate improved 340 percent on the best available algorithm for evaluating how likely it is that someone will be killed or injured in an accident involving a particular car model. The biggest competition currently running is the $3 million Heritage Health prize, which aims to predict and prevent unnecessary hospitalizations, thereby saving the U.S. up to $30 billion per year in unnecessary hospitalizations. “This is one of the few times that health data has been anonymized and made public,” Howard told me. Let the games begin. Kaggle was founded in 2010, is based in San Francisco and has raised $11 million in funding to date. Filed under: dev, games, VentureBeat        
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| Samsung sold more than 300M phones in 2011 Posted: 12 Dec 2011 08:18 AM PST
The news tops off an incredible year for Samsung, which became the top smartphone manufacturer in the world in late October. Apple held the title for a single quarter earlier in the year, and Nokia held it before Apple. Samsung shipped 27.8 million smartphones in the third quarter alone, accounting for 23.8 percent of the smartphone market. On top of smartphones, the company has sold an huge number of “dumb” phones as well. “We are incredibly proud of this record-breaking sales milestone and have exceeded the annual target announced early this year, which is testament to the enduring appeal of Samsung phones with consumers around the world,” said Shin Jong-Kyun, president of Samsung Mobile, in a statement. Samsung’s phone sales in 2010 were about 280 million. What pushed Samsung over the 300 million mark this year could have been the launch of the hugely popular Galaxy S II line. In late August, I wrote a hands on report of the Galaxy S II models for AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, and I still believe the S II line includes some of the best Android phones ever released. By September, the Galaxy S II line had shipped more than 10 million units around the world. Next up for Samsung in the U.S. is the launch of the hyped Galaxy Nexus, which has a 4.65-inch screen and blazing 4G data speeds but still has not been given a release date. The phone was supposedly delayed because Verizon wanted Google Wallet software removed before the launch. Google, Samsung and Verizon’s last official comment about the release date said the phone would launch before the end of the year. Filed under: mobile        
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| Modern Warfare 3 sells $1B in just 16 days Posted: 12 Dec 2011 07:50 AM PST
The game is on track to beat last year’s Call of Duty Black Ops as the best-selling game of all time. The revenue record also eclipses the film record set by James Cameron’s Avatar, which hit $1 billion in 17 days in 2009. Call of Duty now has more than 30 million gamers, a community stretched worldwide. That community is about as big as sustained franchises such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the National Football League, according to the company. “Engagement of our Call of Duty audience continues to rise around the world,” said Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard. “Call of Duty as an entertainment franchise has made an indelible mark on popular culture and its broad and continued success is further validation that audiences increasingly value interactive experiences over passive experiences.” The Call of Duty Elite gamer social network has recovered from its rough start and has more than six million registered players and one million subscriptions sold. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Mac App Store surpasses 100M downloads — Not bad, Apple Posted: 12 Dec 2011 07:30 AM PST
The Mac App Store, which launched January 6, 2011, is an online market place that sells apps for the company’s line of desktop and laptop PCs that run its exclusive OS X operating system. It’s much like the company's mobile App Store, which sells free and paid apps for iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. In June, the company announced that its Mac App Store is the number one channel for PC software sales, surpassing big retailers like Best Buy, Walmart and Office Depot. The store has over 500,000 apps available in a variety of categories, including education, games, graphics and design, lifestyle, productivity, and utilities. The company also made its latest OS X Lion upgrade exclusively available through the Mac App Store. It’s certainly an impressive feat for Apple, which previously faced criticism over the store because it ran counter to the long-standing tradition of software companies selling their own wares. And while the number of downloads is definitely worth noting, there’s also something to be said for the developer community throwing support behind the idea of a desktop application store. Developers can set their own prices for the apps, but have to pay Apple 30 percent of each sale. The developers do not, however, have to pay for hosting, free applications, App Store marketing or credit card fees. I’ve used the Mac App store twice since it opened. The first time was for Lion, and the second was for a native Twitter app that I’ve probably only used once. I’m curious to find out how many VentureBeat readers have downloaded more than one OS X app from the Mac App Store. (And of the people who have downloaded multiple apps from the store, how often do you use those apps?) Filed under: dev, VentureBeat        
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| How Zynga grew from gaming outcast to $9 billion social game powerhouse Posted: 12 Dec 2011 07:00 AM PST
Zynga has turned the video game world upside down in its short five-year history. As it’s poised on the verge of a massive initial public offering, the social game startup is now one of gaming’s great success stories. But its success was never a foregone conclusion. In fact, most game industry veterans didn’t view it as a real game company. Mark Pincus was a four-time entrepreneur, but had no experience in the game industry and had never managed a big company. He was the most unlikely entrepreneur to create a game industry giant. Now Pincus is poised to become a multibillionaire as the largest shareholder in a company that is about to hold on Thursday one of the biggest initial public offerings of the year. Zynga’s billion-dollar IPO, at an $8.9 billion valuation, will be one of the biggest events in gaming history and will make it a financial peer to established rivals like Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard. Through the IPO, Zynga hopes to meet the ambitious goal of investing more “in play than any company in history.” And it is possible in no small part because Pincus, the gaming novice, dreamed bigger than the game industry when it came to giving users accessible and social games, anytime, anywhere. Against all odds, Zynga has out-competed big gaming brands in the great social game Gold Rush. Zynga games have continuously held the No. 1 ranked spot on Facebook since the beginning of 2009. As of today, it has five of the top five games on Facebook. Pincus couldn’t have done it on his own. Along the way, he has been helped by the fortuitous friendship of gaming veteran Bing Gordon. Facebook insider Owen Van Natta played a key role at a critical time. And experienced game designers like Mark Skaggs and Brian Reynolds have led the creation of innovative, addictive games, helping the company rise above its early reputation as a creator of cheap knockoffs and a persistent spammer of Facebook news feeds. Together, these people helped Zynga get where it is today, while rivals like Playfish and Playdom decided to take earlier, less lucrative exits. Since its inception in 2007, Zynga has generated more than $1.5 billion in revenues — a remarkable sum for such a young company. It is now trying to seize the leading share of a $9 billion virtual goods market that it believes could triple in the next five years. Now the company’s ambition is to become as synonymous with play on the internet as Google is with search, Amazon is with shopping, and Facebook is with sharing. It was lucky that Zynga started out with so little game experience in the beginning. But throughout its life, it would have to prove over and over again that it was a real game company that mattered. In the following pages, I’ll tell the tale of Zynga from its earliest days. This story is based on extensive interviews and research since 2008. We’ve had limited access to Mark Pincus. In recent months, he hasn’t been giving interviews, due to a quiet period mandated by regulators. But the story of Zynga isn’t just about the founder of the company. It’s also about the whole cast of characters who surrounded him, the rivals who drove him to succeed, and the industry that challenged Zynga to prove itself over and over. We’ve done our best to triangulate on how Zynga became what it is today — and how it almost didn’t happen. Humble beginnings |
| Kindle Fire update coming in less than two weeks, fixes performance, multitouch issues Posted: 12 Dec 2011 06:49 AM PST
The company says that an over-the-air update, due within two weeks, will alleviate many of the Kindle Fire’s issue with performance and its multitouch screen, the New York Times reports. Additionally, the update will add a much-needed privacy feature: the ability to cover your web browsing history tracks (oddly, the NYT suggests this will be a great way to help you better cheat on your spouse). For many Kindle Fire owners, the update can’t come soon enough. There are widely reported slowdown issues with the Kindle Fire’s browser, and its multitouch screen at times seems to have a mind of its own. These issues are easy enough to fix with software updates — thankfully for Amazon. But other issues with the tablet, including its lack of an external volume control, are impossible to fix, and consumers will just have to learn to live with them (consider it part of the cost for an ultra-cheap $200 tablet). The NYT speculates that Amazon will likely deliver a newer Kindle Fire tablet this spring, which falls in line with plenty of rumors surrounding a larger, more powerful Amazon tablet on the horizon. While the Kindle Fire aims for the low-end tablet market, the larger tablet, which is said to sport a 10-inch screen an quad-core processor, would be a direct competitor to Apple’s next-generation iPad.
Filed under: media, mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Disney’s Playdom launches social game Gardens of Time on iPad Posted: 12 Dec 2011 06:00 AM PST
The launch is a major one for Playdom, since the Palo Alto, Calif.-based division wants to replicated the success of the social game on mobile platforms, which are expected to be a significant avenue of growth for social games. The game has been successful because it was the first major “hidden object” game on Facebook. In such games, which are popular on casual game web sites, players search for objects in a scene. The game launched in April on Facebook and it became one of the most popular titles on the social network. More than 5 billion hidden object game sessions have been played to date, and the game hit a peak of 17 million monthly active users and 4 million daily active users. The game now has 9.1 million MAUs and 2.1 million DAUs, but it is still Playdom’s most popular game on Facebook by far. The iPad version of the game is integrated with OpenFeint, Game Center, and Facebook. That means that the developers have tried to make the game as social as possible, so that the title can spread in a more viral fashion. In Gardens of Time, players join the Time Society, an elite group of time-traveling detectives. They explore vibrant hidden object scenes throughout history to guard the secrets of time travel and preserve history’s flow. As players find objects, they earn coins, the games currency, and collect ancient artifacts to personalize a garden that you can show off. As your garden grows, so does your reputation and you can unlock more travel spots. The game is social because you can interact with other players, challenging them to high scores where you find objects on a time limit. You can send gifts and visit neighbors and compete in a “best garden” contest. John Spinale, senior vice president of social games at the Disney Interactive Media Group, said that Gardens of Time is perfectly suited for the tablet experience and the company sees a chance to engage with millions of players on the go on the new platform. Filed under: games, mobile, social        
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| Cloud testing service Soasta secures another $12M in funding Posted: 12 Dec 2011 04:30 AM PST
The five year old company specializes in performance-testing websites through the cloud with its recently-patented CloudTest visual test creation environment. Soasta can test many functions of a website, including specific front-end features, such as account logins and page loads. Soasta then puts together a report for your website that alerts your company to any issues that may exist. Its services range from a free software download, released this year, to complete turnkey testing services. Soasta's clients include big names like American Girl, Hallmark, Inuit, and Microsoft. "The explosion of mobile apps has been beyond our expectation," says Soasta CEO Tom Lounibos (pictured above) in an interview. "We are in the business of helping companies and individuals focus on the performance of their web apps and mobile apps moving forward." The new round of funding will be used to grow the company overseas, as Lounibos explains, "We will be using [the funding] for expansion of many things—mainly geographical expansion into China. There is a market there as more and more people are beginning to use mobile technology. China is a big market for us, [as is] India and Brazil." Soasta is a privately held company that was founded in 2006 and operates out of Mountain View, CA. This year the company grew to include over 100 employees and over 3,000 clients who use their services. Over the last five years, Soasta has been funded by UV Partners, Canaan Partners, Formative Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, and The Entrepreneurs' Fund. This latest round brings its total funding to $32 million. Filed under: deals        
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| In omninous retrospective, Anonymous warns, “Prepare for 2012″ Posted: 11 Dec 2011 02:38 PM PST
The “LulzXmas” video is a montage of all of the security embarrassments, cyber attacks, practical jokes and other mayhem caused in the name of Anonymous. It isn’t clear if the message is a threat of more attacks coming next year, as Anonymous doesn’t speak with a single voice. The video starts with cyber-fied Christmas music and includes images of newscasts about the hacking of the PlayStation Network, the Central Intelligence Agency web site, and the prosecution of Julian Assange, head of WikiLeaks. The video then closes with a long rendition of a speech stirring people to revolutionary actions. “The hate of men will pass, and dictators will die,” the speaker says. It closes with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, who said, “A government afraid of its citizens is a democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny.” And then the video warns, “Prepare yourself for 2012.” Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| E-commerce sales hit $25B, up 15 percent Posted: 11 Dec 2011 02:21 PM PST
Market research firm comScore said that spending for the first 39 days of the November-December selling season were $24.6 billion. The most recent week ending Dec. 9 reached $5.9 billion, up 15 percent from the corresponding week a year ago. Last week saw three days of sales each exceeding $1 billion in sales. For the whole season, six days have exceeded $1 billion in sales, including the record-setting $1.25 billion for Cyber Monday on Nov. 28. Commenting on the sales, comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said, “These highlights represent another very positive sign for the holiday shopping season, as the week following 'Cyber Week' often experiences relative softness in spending momentum due to retailers pulling back on their promotional activity.” He added, “As we enter what will be the heaviest week of the season for online retailers – beginning with 'Green Monday' on December 12 – all signs are now pointing to a strong finish to the season.” [image credit: LeapGo] Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Comedian Louis CK offers $5 DRM-free special, gives the finger to traditional distribution Posted: 11 Dec 2011 11:12 AM PST
Typically we’d have to wait for a new DVD, CD release, or cable network special to get new material from a popular comedian. But with Live at the Beacon Theater, CK is offering it on his website for just $5 with no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. Purchasing the special allows you to stream it twice in your browser, or download it twice as an unprotected MPEG 4 video file. Once downloaded, you can view the special as much as you want, put it on your smartphone, or even burn it to a DVD. CK paid for the production and online distribution of the special himself, and he says that if this release goes well he may offer more content in the future. While it probably cost CK quite a bit to put this project together, he’ll likely recoup his expenses quickly since he doesn’t have to share the profits with anyone. CK also preemptively asked his fans not to download the special illegally: “Look, I don’t really get the whole “torrent” thing. I don’t know enough about it to judge either way. But I’d just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without “corporate” restrictions.” Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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