Zynga: Alpha Dog of Social Gaming

If you have been through the social networking sites, you must have heard about social games like FarmVille, FrontierVille or City-Ville. Have you wondered how the dogs got into the net? It was all Zynga’s idea.

Thanks to the entrepreneurial skills of its founder and CEO Mark Pincus who established the company in Potrero Hill in San Francisco. Its headquarters has 13 “studios” where engineers and designers crowd together for Zynga’s 11 popular online games.

Pincus developed the concept in December of 2006. The idea was to develop an asynchronous online game where people can play with real-world friends. The games would hitch on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. The whole idea was untested and considered as freak by many of Pincus’ critics.

After his idea was dropped many times, he used a marketing strategy that really worked. Zynga’s are not all about games; it’s about the “social.” With games Zynga has birthed, people from all across the globe have 15 minutes of not only connecting but playing with their folks.

To maintain its fair share of the market, Zynga built an analytics engine which measures every aspect of gaming experience. The goal was to evaluate the users’ behavior in support of Pincus’ effort to improve every game everyday. Pincus believes that its edge is not only about the features but the right social experience.

The analytics provided them with data, such as, which features are more popular, which day of the week people prefer to play; which age group play the longest; and which demographic level invites more people to join the games. They use these precious data to create new game elements. There are hundreds of tests running in every game each day.

No one believed Pincus could become a CEO of a $50-million revenue company. The company is worth $500 million in 2010. Its most popular game City-Ville has about 84.2 million active monthly users. Pincus sees an even loftier opportunity ahead. He vows to improve the games because in five years, there is an expected 2 billion social gamers all around the world.

The Fundamentals of Facebook

While Facebook is far from a small business today, it got its start in a Harvard University dorm room in February 2004. The social networking site was only available to students at Harvard to begin with, but quickly expanded to include other Boston-area colleges and universities, and eventually colleges and universities across the United States. and Canada. Now Facebook is open to all users, not only those in college, and currently boasts 800 million active users.

In its less than ten years of operation, Facebook has been the subject of a blockbuster movie, several lawsuits, and a media storm. The beauty of the free social networking site is that it allows users to see what their friends and family are doing and lets them stay connected through a centralized location. Users can find long-lost friends as well as make new friends who share common interests or play the same games.

Although other companies, including Google Inc., have tried to launch their own social networking sites, Facebook remains the most popular social network choice. Continued development brings new features regularly, including the ability to log into other sites using your Facebook login information. Additionally, most smartphones offer Facebook apps, so users can stay connected on the go, uploading pics they snap with their camera phone and “checking in” at area locations.

One of the biggest benefits for businesses advertising on Facebook is the ability to target consumers based on the information they provided in their Facebook profile as well as the pages they’ve liked. This allows advertisers to target the consumers most likely to use their goods and services. This benefits consumers as well as they are made aware of local offers as well as offers that are based on their interests and likes.

Facebook is currently estimated to be worth more than $66 billion and an initial public offering is expected in the spring of 2012.