Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Internet: Search, Share, Shop and...Play!


Zynga: 'connecting the world through games' is going public and the four year old social media company could be worth $20 billion.

"The company has more than 230 million monthly active users in nearly 140 countries. Players of Zynga games spend about two billion minutes every day tending to their virtual crops, interacting with CityVille neighbors and more."

Zynga games include: Cityville, Farmville, Empires and Allies, Frontierville, Mafia Wars, Zynga Poker, and Words with Friends.

"We believed play -- like search, share and shop -- would become one of the core activities on the Internet," founder and CEO Mark Pincus wrote in the S-1's introduction. "Play is one of life's big macros -- it's an activity people love to do and do often. Zynga was founded on a deeply held passion for games that family and friends play together -- connecting, collaborating, gifting, bragging, nurturing, admiring and sometimes just doing silly stuff together. Reality is, we all wish we had more time to play together."

Soon after FarmVille debuted on Facebook, it was being played by millions of people who, together, spent millions of hours on their digital plots of land.