Zynga

After Facebook IPO, Zuckerberg's hardest test awaits

The clock is about to start ticking.

When Facebook goes public later this week -- potentially commanding a lofty valuation of more than $100 billion out of the gate -- the demands on the 28-year-old Mark Zuckerberg will far outweigh any sartorial silliness about what he should or should not wear.

Not that there is any immediate pressure to perform for Wall Street given the understandable excitement about the huge number of people using Facebook every month -- a customer base now approaching some 15 percent of the world's population. But honeymoons for newly public companies only last so … Read more

Zynga's YoVille gets hacked

YoVille players starting posting complaints on the gaming company's forum about a month ago. Strange happenings were afoot -- players' virtual items were stolen and not returned and some players' property supply was completely depleted.

Apparently, the game had been hacked. According to the tech news site VentureBeat, hackers disrupted YoVille's gameplay for about 1,000 players during a couple weeks of April. "The Best YoVille Hackers" claimed responsibility for the hack.

"We detected unusual activity in YoVille, and it coincided with reports from a small number of users," Zynga's chief security officer … Read more

Draw Something sheds 4M daily users in the past month

Interest in Draw Something appears to have peaked and then fallen off a cliff.

The wildly popular game, which most resembles the board game Pictionary, was released in February, and within the first two weeks, it skyrocketed with 10 million downloads. Quickly, both the free and paid versions were No. 1 on iTunes' download charts.

By early April, the game had exceeded 50 million downloads and boasted more than 14 million daily users. However, in the past month, Draw Something has lost 4 million daily active users, according to data from market analyst AppData, which says it collects information directly … Read more

The 404 1,045: Where we're outed on Facebook (podcast)

We love Facebook pranks as much as the next guys, but not when it's coming from an anonymous source at Best Buy. As if we needed another reason not to step foot in the big blue retailer, we read this story about a Best Buy employee that posted a phony Facebook status update on a customer's phone. The message declared, "I am gay, I'm coming out," but there's one problem: the customer is straight.… Read more

Zynga Q1 offers upside surprise, investors stage relief rally

Update: 4:45 PM P.T. Zynga's stock rose in after-hours trading after the company's first-quarter earnings report beat Wall Street's expectations.

"We're pleased with the progress that Zynga has made in the first quarter growing our audience reach 25% year over year and nearly 20% quarter over quarter. Our team did a great job launching 5 new games across mobile and web including new hits like Hidden Chronicles, Slingo and Scramble with Friends," CEO Mark Pincus said in a statement.

Zynga had revenue of $321 million, up 32 percent year over year and … Read more

Zynga listens to users with Draw Something update

Draw Something (iPhone|Android) hit it big at the iTunes App Store by following a simple concept: draw a picture that describes a word, then send it to a friend to guess the word. The game took off immediately at the iTunes App Store for its close resemblance to board game Pictionary, but there were still rumblings from users of features that could make it better.… Read more

Zattikka sets sights on Zynga with developer acquisitions

A U.K.-based Zynga competitor has made some strategic moves to assert itself in the social-gaming space.

Zattikka announced yesterday that it has completed the acquisitions of online-gaming firms, Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, and Concept Art House.

According to Zattikka, Hattrick Holdings is best known for its free-to-play online soccer manager, Hattrick. Concept Art House is a development studio that has worked on a host of games, including Command and Conquer and World of Warcraft. Sneaky Games has a three-game portfolio focusing on online role-playing games.

"The vision for the company is to become a large scale, diverse … Read more

Words with Friends players richer than Angry Birds fans?

Angry Birds players tend to skew Republican, while Words with Friends players tend to make more money.

That's according to a recent study by JumpTap, which provides targeted mobile advertising and collects trending data.

Another finding: the new iPad has exceeded sales expectations, even if its traffic levels are lower than prior versions of Apple's hit tablet.

The results -- particularly from the mobile games -- provide some interesting insight into the patterns and preferences of players. Words with Friends players are more likely to have an annual income over $100,000 and tend to use smartphones. Angry … Read more

Draw Something goes viral with 50 million downloads

Zynga must be glad it dropped that $180 million on OMGPOP last month. Besides acquiring Checkers, Pool, and other online games, Zynga also got its hands on Draw Something--which topped charts today as the fastest-growing original mobile game ever, according to VentureBeat.

The wildly popular game, which most resembles the board game Pictionary, was released less than two months ago and within the first two weeks it skyrocketed with 10 million downloads. Quickly, both the free and paid versions were No. 1 on iTunes' download charts.

As of today, the game has exceeded 50 million downloads, according to VentureBeat. … Read more

Draw Something!

Draw Something offers turn-based gameplay that brings friends together as teammates to draw basic items (and sometimes more-complex ones) to see how long they can continue to guess each others' drawings correctly. Once you've created a game with a friend through Facebook, Twitter, or by registering within the game, you're given three choices (easy, medium, or hard) of objects to draw that your friend will need to identify. Once your friend receives the drawing, he or she is given only a handful of available letters to use for the word (probably to make it a little easier to … Read more