zynga

Former Yahoo executive Ellen Siminoff has been appointed to Zynga's board of directors, the first woman to sit on the social-game publisher's board.

Siminoff, who is the CEO of educational publishing company Shmoop University, will also join Zynga's audit committee, the San Francisco-based publisher said today.

"Ellen has great experience and insights operating Web businesses at scale and brings a passion for consumer Internet products," Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said in a statement. "Ellen has also been a longtime Words With Friends player with her family and shares our mission to connect the world … Read more

Facebook has reached agreements with game developers Electronic Arts, Kixeye, and Zynga to test a new "Start Now" option that allows users to start playing games without having to go through an app permissions dialog.

Games that have the new feature include Backyard Monsters, Battle Pirates, Indiana Jones Adventure World, and Zynga Slingo, among others. They can access a user's basic profile information and friend list without having to request doing so.

"We're beginning a limited rollout of a feature that enables people to start playing a select number of games on Facebook.com in … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Mobile is disruptive, but the most obvious disruptions can be the best opportunities -- at least for online social gaming, according to Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus.

During the morning keynote fireside chat at MobileBeat 2012 on Tuesday, Pincus explained his vision of the future of mobile games to GamesBeat lead writer Dean Takahashi.

Essentially, Pincus argued that the industry needs to be more interconnected and there need to be more open channels so that many more games can be discovered -- not just the ones that for whatever reason can get into the Top 10. … Read more

Facebook said today that it has expanded the availability of its App Center store to several more countries.

The App Center will appear as a bookmark on users' Facebook home page and mobile apps in the U.S., Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K.

The App Center is Facebook's attempt to drive its ecosystem of applications of games and other services on the social network, keeping users glued to its site even longer. The company is also increasingly reliant on these apps for revenue, taking a cut of any money these apps generate. … Read more

Mark Pincus has spent nearly a decade gambling on social networking. His bets have clearly paid off. With Zynga, which he founded in 2007, Pincus rode Facebook's social network to bring social gaming to the masses. Zynga's first game was, appropriately, Texas hold 'em poker. The company went public in December 2011, making Pincus a billionaire. Prior to Zynga, Pincus co-founded tribe.net, a "friend" network that faded unevenly into history as Facebook began its rise to social-network dominance.

He was also an investor in Friendster, an early social network focused on dating, and along with … Read more

Matching with Friends (2.99, full version - Free, ad-supported version) is another in a long line of Zynga apps that let you play turn-based games with a friend on mobile devices. But instead of playing word games loosely based on Hangman, Scrabble, or Boggle, this time you'll be strategically placing matching colored blocks on a gameboard, then sending your move to a friend.

Like other Zynga games, Matching with Friends makes getting connected with your friends easy. Upon launch you'll be asked to sign in through either your Facebook or Twitter account. Once logged in, you can search for other players from your friends list or get automatically matched with a random player.… Read more

In a first for a Zynga casual game, users can now have virtual sex in the company's new title, The Ville. It will be available tomorrow.

The Ville, which appears to be heavily inspired (to put it kindly) by the popular game The Sims, is the most realistic game yet in the Ville series of games that includes FarmVille, CityVille, and CastleVille. The concept is that you build your dream house in the app and then invite your friends over to hang out.

Or more.

According to Zynga executive producer David Gray, when someone is in your house and … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- As Facebook has been colonizing the planet, approaching a billion users for its social network, Zynga has been drafting in its wake. The social-gaming company, which launched July 1, 2007, with a poker game, accounts for nearly 15 percent of Facebook's first-quarter revenue and has more than $1 billion in revenue annually on its own.

But lately, Zynga's stock has taken a hit, with investors concerned about negative free cash flow and too much dependence on Facebook. The stock has been well below its December 2011 $10 IPO price, and AppData reports that Zynga's … Read more

Zynga users may have noticed something unfamiliar on the Web site -- Facebook ads have crept over to the gaming platform's site, filling the space that used to house Google ads.

The change was first noticed by Inside Facebook and it has the media speculating up a storm about whether this is the beginning of Facebook's advertising service empire.

Now when you connect with Facebook on Zynga.com, you'll see personalized ads and sponsored stories just like they appear in Facebook, the social network says. According to Facebook, you'll see only sponsored stores about activity that'… Read more