Word: millions
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
FarmVille is the most popular game on Facebook--65 million unique monthly players and growing. It is also the furthest place imaginable from the seedy underbelly of the Internet. It's a hamlet where the sun always shines, crops always grow and your friends drop by to do chores accompanied by plinky guitar music. Its astonishing popularity is a testament to the potential of gaming on social networks. Social games promise the golden pork-chop combo of the addictiveness of computer games with the communality of Facebook and MySpace. And they generate some of their revenue from product come...
...operated six of the 10 most popular Facebook games: FarmVille, Cafe World, Mafia Wars, YoVille, zyngapoker and Roller Coaster Kingdom. Founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus, 43, Zynga had 45 staffers by June 2008 and now employs 600, counting contractors. Its most recently launched game, FishVille, hooked 9 million users in a week. Zynga is privately held, but a rival less than half its size was recently bought by Electronic Arts, the GM of games, for $400 million. How could an outfit that offers scammy mobile-phone horoscope subscriptions get so popular...
Starting a social-gaming company is also a grind. You have to do a million little things to get ahead. Industry watchers credit Zynga with figuring out hooks for its games that make people want to revisit--a combination of shrewdly timed rewards, incentives and opportunities to play with friends...
...this, the company needed money and had to prove to investors that offering free games on Facebook was a sound proposition. Zynga attracted $39 million in start-up money and got a second wave of $15 million this month. Ads and virtual goods bring in most of the revenue. But because people who play free games on the Internet like the free part, Zynga needed a third income stream--product come...
...moment, Zynga has removed all offers and says it's going to vet each one before it appears. Whether this is just a speed bump for a company that's growing dizzyingly fast or a huge infrastructural problem is unclear. Reports peg Zynga's revenue at $100 million a year, which the company says is low. If you assume similar economies for Zynga as for Playfish, says Atul Bagga, an analyst with Think Equity, "Zynga could be four times bigger on a run-rate basis...