

Zynga down ~40% in after hours trading - tikhon
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:ZNGA

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overgard
Good riddance.

I realize this isn't actually the end of them, but it's indicative of where
they're going.

I think in the end, the narrative for zynga will be roughly this: they found a
way to capitalize on markets that really weren't being served at all (last I
heard, the average zynga customer was roughly a 43 year old woman -- not your
average target market for games). And then they killed their own golden goose.

They offered an experience that was safe, accessible, and novel to people that
had never gotten to experience games on those terms, and the market exploded.

The problem is, what they offered wasn't sustainable. Instead of parlaying
their initial shallow success into advancing the art form, they tried to
optimize it in a way that wasn't really ethical. Their games were designed to
be exploitive in the same sense that gambling is exploitive (using the same
cognitive mechanisms.) They expected that people would just keep coming back
for the same reasons people become compulsive gamblers -- because they can't
help it. But buying more trinkets in a game that makes you check up on it
every four hours isn't the same experience as being a VIP at a casino and even
for the most compulsive people I think the nature of a zynga game becomes
pretty gross after a while.

So I guess I'd say they made bad games for ethically dubious reasons, and
nobody in their right mind should miss them when they're inevitably gone.

~~~
sreyaNotfilc
From my experience, they've also made games unplayable. Take "Draw Something"
for example. Ever since the Zynga acuisition you get the following

1) Automatic Facebook login checks. I'm fine with this since everyone I played
with are on Facebook. The problem here is that sometimes the automatic login
does not work leading me to constantly open, close, open, close, open the app
just to get the the main screen.

2) The game is buggy as hell. Not only is the login bad, but the game
constantly dies. Its not fun anymore. In the back of your mind you know that
as soon as you click out of an ad, the application will close out causing you
to reopen it to see ... more ads. Its ludicrous.

3) Speaking of ads, there's like 3 times the ads as before. Some ads don't
even have a way to click out of it. You're just stuck looking at a 10-30
second ad to draw (if the app didn't close) for 10 seconds. It also seems as
if every time you touch a screen, you get an advertisement. Its ridiculous.

It wasn't like this game was that fun to begin with. But turning a game into a
chore just makes you not want to play it anymore. And I haven't.

------
_delirium
Not a good year for investors in newly public tech companies... of big IPOs in
the past year, Zynga is down 70% from the offering price, Facebook is down
30%, and Groupon is down 55%. Seems like the investing public screwed up and
massively overpaid VCs/founders for the shares, by a total of about _six
billion dollars_.

~~~
bane
I think just as interesting, it was almost entirely predicted by people who
are heavily in the tech industry.

The market writ large ignored the input from those _in the know_ and is now
acting surprised -- it befuddles the imagination.

~~~
tatsuke95
Except the VCs and to a lesser extent the Tech media, who are _supposed_ to be
in the know, were actively promoting this junk as revolutionary.

Once again, Joe Public and his retirement get the short end of the stick.
Manufacturing money is a dirty business. I wonder if we'll ever look at
Silicon Valley VCs in the same light as we do Wall Street bankers?

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zallarak
After hours trading statistics shouldn't be taken too seriously, because there
are far less traders resulting in less liquidity/larger spreads. For all we
know, the -40% quote was triggered by a single trade [perhaps a panicked
investor agreed to sell his shares at a 40% discount].
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_hours_trading>]. For all we know, it
might tank tomorrow, but it hasn't yet.

~~~
elsewhen
According to nasdaq.com there were 5.9MM ZNGA shares traded in the after hours
session: [http://community.nasdaq.com/News/2012-07/after-hours-most-
ac...](http://community.nasdaq.com/News/2012-07/after-hours-most-active-for-
jul-25-2012-znga-qqq-lvs-vale-amln-bac-intc-wfm-eqm-aet-wm-
dtv.aspx?storyid=158684)

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kirubakaran
IMHO, Conclusive proof that we are not in a bubble, just a boom.

------
tikhon
Bloomberg: "Zynga Inc. (ZNGA), the biggest developer of games played on
Facebook Inc. (FB), missed analysts’ second-quarter revenue and profit
estimates as the company struggled to add social game users."
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-25/zynga-misses-
estima...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-25/zynga-misses-estimates-as-
users-flee-social-games-for-mobile.html)

------
monkeyfacebag
Looks like Facebook is down almost 8% as well.

~~~
kmfrk
Facebook derives a large amount of revenue from Zynga, so it's probably not
completely unrelated.

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dkrich
As I wrote before, this is a doomed company. They spend cash like they make a
lot of it, but in reality lose hundreds of millions. Mark my words, whatever
day-to-day fluctuations occur over the next 6 months to a year, Zynga will be
swallowed up by AOL or Yahoo and disappear. Horrible management, talented
employees, flawed business model.

TechCrunch articles are cool, but facts are stubborn things. If you spend more
than you make, eventually that shit will catch up with you.

------
adebelov
i think this is an amazing buy. what do you guys think?

~~~
henryw
<http://i.imgur.com/kiXss.png> looks like a downtrend

~~~
fsckin
Just curious, where did you get that graph from?

~~~
henryw
Tradestation software. <http://www.tradestation.com/>

