zynga

Rumor has it that game maker Zynga is in the running to buy the company OMGPOP, which makes the newest chart-topping game Draw Something.

If the acquisition goes through, it will be Zynga's biggest buyout to date, according the tech news site TechCrunch, which spoke to sources with direct knowledge of discussions between the two companies.

"Given that OMGPOP has raised around $17 million to date," TechCrunch reporter Kim-Mai Cutler wrote in an article speculating about the acquisition. "I'd expect the price for this deal to be in the $150 [million] to $250 million range.&… Read more

In an attempt to fend off the possibility of its stock price plummeting, Zynga has announced plans to increase its public float.

The social-gaming company revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing today that some shareholders will sell up to $400 million of their shares in a secondary stock offering. The move comes just a few months after Zynga went public, and before the end of the 165-day lockout period that bans shareholders from selling any shares.

If this sounds familiar, it's because LinkedIn made a similar decision back in November, offering 8 million shares in a … Read more

The Zynga Platform has signed on a major partner.

The social-gaming company has inked a deal with Konami Digital Entertainment that will see the developer bring titles to the new Zynga Platform, the firms announced yesterday. Zynga has also signed on developers Rebellion and Playdemic.

Konami is one of the most-respected game developers in the world, thanks to its many successful franchises, including Metal Gear Solid, Contra, Silent Hill, and others. The Konami deal adds some additional legitimacy to Zynga Platform--a service that is still in its infancy.

Zynga announced its Platform service earlier this month. When gamers head over … Read more

Zynga's move to create its own platform and Web service for game developers will be a big test for its cloud computing infrastructure.

The game company yesterday outlined its new platform. In a nutshell, Zynga.com will become a destination for games. The company will also diversify away from Facebook, which accounts for most of Zynga's distribution. Zynga will also open up its platform to third party game developers.

None of those items would be possible without Zynga's Z-Cloud infrastructure. That infrastructure relies heavily on Citrix software and virtualization technology.

The launch of Zynga's platform is … Read more

week in review Making the biggest splash at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, this week was Microsoft, which took the wraps off the next iteration of its operating system.

Microsoft is trying to sew up the seams that separate mobile phones, laptops, desktops, and tablets and offer consumers a "consistent" experience, regardless of what type of device they are using, Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky said as he unveiled the beta for the Windows 8 operating system. The company is doing so by focusing simultaneously on the operating system, apps, and hardware.

As a result, using Windows … Read more

Zynga today is announcing a big new plan to seduce Facebook's users and steal its third-party developers. Does this mean it's the end of the relationship between the two companies?

It doesn't. The companies' fortunes will remain deeply intertwined for the foreseeable future. An emancipated Zynga would be bad for Facebook, but Zynga can't exactly make it alone, either.

If Zynga could easily leave Facebook, it already would have; paying Facebook's rent is not cheap (according to Facebook's IPO filing paperwork, Zynga accounts for 12 percent of Facebook's revenue). But there are ways … Read more

Zynga was once a big buyer of cloud computing services. Today, it's becoming a seller.

In 2009, when FarmVille started taking off--it grew to 10 million daily active users in six weeks, 25 million in five months--the company began to lean heavily on rented resources to handle the load. Zynga used Amazon Web Services, and over time, shunted more and more of the day-to-day load of running its games to AWS. By January 2011, AWS was handling 80 percent of Zynga's load. Only 20 percent was on servers that Zynga owned.

But at Zynga scale, using that infrastructure … Read more

Zynga appears to be separating from Facebook with two major changes it's announcing today. These moves will help the company grow and give it a measure of independence from Facebook.

First, the company is rolling out its own games portal, Zynga.com, where players can jump directly in to some of the Zynga games they've been playing so far on Facebook. The portal will also have its own game-focused social network functions. It will also allow players to find and play against people who are not in their Facebook friend networks.

Second, Zynga is beginning to open up … Read more

We all know that controlling your brand is crucial, especially in big business. You can't afford to let someone else get ahold of your name, and in the Internet era, that means keeping your Web site locked down, far from anyone else's reach.

So it was quite a surprise to me when I found out today, via the Twitter feed of the great game designer Brenda Brathwaite, that Zyngo CEO Mark Pincus could be in real danger of losing Markpincus.com.

According to a Whois search, the URL expired on February 9. And while registrars usually give domain … Read more