
Zynga May Be Valued at $1 Billion Feeding Off Facebook Craze - iamelgringo
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aK27lRYbSPqU&pos=13
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biznerd
"That could make San Francisco-based Zynga the third-largest U.S. video-game
publisher by market capitalization, bigger than Take-Two Interactive Software
Inc., the maker of crime-game franchise Grand Theft Auto."

Awful. A company that uses sleazy monetization tactics (until someone called
them out on it) and blatantly ripoffs games from competitors will be worth
more than one of the most innovative game developers.

Mobwars > GTA?

I guess the valuation though reflects the business fundamentals of social vs
console gaming.

~~~
omarchowdhury
yes, costs much less to acquire a social gamer than consolers, but revenue per
customer is higher on the console side.

i wonder how zynga's revenue is going to be hit when they stop running scammy
ads... and if this IPO would even occur.

~~~
jfarmer
They have stopped. According to Zynga, offers consist of only 10% of their
revenue.

~~~
bilbo0s
According to Lehman, just before the crash, their CDS exposure was
'...limited.'

At debut Novembre Zynga's revenue from offers was ~33%. With each interview
since Arrington broke news on the scam, that percentage has gone down. All
'according to Zynga.'

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socratees
I hope someone standardizes things that go on inside social networks. Should
we consider the money made from selling deceptive ads as a legal? Or is it
even a proper revenue model? (For eg. certain ads say user will get points if
he takes a 2 min IQ test, and in the end the user signs up for the service
unintentionally, and ends up paying a monthly bill before he notices the
charge and cancels it.)

And I may be wrong, but what intellectual capital does a company like this
have? Anyone who buys it, is just buying the user base. And what about the
future of the company? What would be the revenue 5 years later? How does a
quantitative analyst factor this while calculating the worth of the company?

~~~
teej
I feel it important to clarify a few things: Zynga has already stopped running
offers (scammy ads), they're too big to buy, and they don't own their userbase
(yet).

~~~
Tiktaalik
There's now a Farmville.com, so that seems like a move to slowly separate away
from being completely dependent on Facebook.

