Facebook: We Need Zynga

[Mike Kayatta]

Facebook: We Need Zynga

Facebook will be facing serious financial losses if you don't start buying more mini purple unicorns for your virtual farm pronto.

Zynga hasn't been doing very well of late. Between just to break even [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115382-Zynga-Loses-150-on-Every-New-Paying-Customer], the winds of fate have definitely shifted for the famous purveyor of virtual agriculture. While many people plagued by ceaseless Facebook proferrings of lost heifers would likely cheer the company's decline, Zynga's losses may have a secondary effect. According to statements made by Facebook in a recent SCE filing, Zynga's ill fate will directly effect the largest social network in the world.

"We currently generate significant revenue as a result of our relationship with Zynga," Facebook said, "and, if we are unable to successfully maintain this relationship, our financial results could be harmed."

Between Zynga's numerous advertisements and in-game microtransations, the company was reportedly responsible for a whopping 12% of earned revenue for Facebook in 2011. And that's to say nothing of the incalculable FarmVille-driven visits each day, which increase traffic and, by extension, the rates Facebook can ask from other advertisers.

"If the use of Zynga games on our platform declines, if Zynga launches games on or migrates games to competing platforms, or if we fail to maintain good relations with Zynga," Facebook warned, "we may lose Zynga as a significant platform developer and our financial results may be adversely affected."

Facebook is a massive company with vaults of cash fat enough to make Scrooge McDuck blush, so sometimes it's difficult to imagine a single member of its complex ecosystem able to cause such a large amount of damage. Still, a zillion bajillion dollars minus ten percent is still more than most companies see in their life span, so there's probably not a huge risk of you needing to find a new place to post pictures of the flan you had after dinner at that one place if people stop purchasing red toadstool shaped pixels.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5881534/facebook-cares-about-your-stupid-farm]


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[Qitz]

Yeah, who else is going to steal ideas from all the other developers! Dear God, think of the Facebook Children!

 

[aPod]

If Zynga goes down Facebook might too.

I really don't see the problem here. We'll just end up with an even better social networking site. It'll be what facebook was to myspace.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

So? This is not the first time a social networking site has died and I won't miss Facebook. I mean this are banking on 1 company keeping them afloat they obviously have a bad and unsustainable business model and really reconsider their approach. No, I won't care if a company goes down due to bad management or a bad climate that is life and shit happens. I do dislike social networking but I understand the good it can do and there will always be another site to take over for Facebook, Myspace, Bebo or whatever the next big one is.

 

[Musaab]

Death to Facebook AND Zynga. I am glad to see their fortunes tied to one another.

 

[ShaneGunWolf]

Death to Facebook AND Zynga. I am glad to see their fortunes tied to one another.

This. Ten times. But, mostly Zynga.

FaceBook is useless to me and Zynga is nothing but a bunch of cheap bastards.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Yeah, who else is going to steal ideas from all the other developers! Dear God, think of the Facebook Children!

I know! How else are they going to waste their time on fake farming, house building and cafe managing? Oh God....THE HORROR!!

 

[Kross]

Zynga isn't doing anything that all the other Facebook third party developers can't do in their own ways. Especially with Facebook working to help them with both the features/API for their application framework, and with acquiring a larger audience for whatever the product happens to be.

Zynga just happens to be the single largest developer on Facebook, so it will hurt a bit if/when they go away. Facebook might have to point some of their thousands of employees into helping smaller studios go viral (or helping them more then is needed currently).

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Facebook will be facing serious financial losses if you don't start buying more mini purple unicorns for your virtual farm pronto.

You mean basing your financial status on the whims of the public isn't stable? Oh dearie me...

 

[Davroth]

What do I care if FB loses money? Zynga, to me, is what's wrong with the game industry. The sooner they disappear into obscurity, the better.

 

[UnderGlass]

Basically - Diddums.

As Kross said, the smaller developers ready to step into any vacuum left by Zynga are Legion. And if Facebook needs to diversify its earning strategy a little to accommodate for these bumps in the road then so be it. If they're unable to find some other way of making a profit with the world's single largest and most successful social network at their fingertips then something is wrong with them not us, so - Double Diddums.

Oh, and this -

 

[Otaku World Order]

Y'know, maybe if Zynga wasn't contantly stealing things and then talking smack to the people they stole from, I might care. And Facebook's fate doesn't worry me much either

 

[Danpascooch]

Seriously? Zynga is morally and creatively bankrupt and deserves to go out of business. And what's going to happen to Facebook? Are they going to go belly up? OF COURSE NOT! That's fucking ridiculous, it's like suggesting Microsoft is going out of business because the Zune failed, or that Google Wave is the end of Google.

What exactly would Facebook have to cut down on? All they really provide is server space, not any physical good, and they have the ads to cover that, asking for sympathy for this piece of shit company (Zynga) so that Facebook can make more money than they possibly need is absolute bullshit.

 

[Baresark]

Two birds with one Stone, fantastic! No more Zynga and Facebook gets a hit. It's win-win really. I guess my hatred for Facebook really started when that founder fella gave Newark NJ school systems $25 million. I know it seems great and wonderful, but the Newark school systems already gets the lions share of the school budgets for the entire state. They were getting $44k per student from the state. And yet they have the worst schooling in the entire state, if not one of the worst school systems in the country. My high school didn't get half that much from the state. So, I decided then and there that I could not support such stupidity. And the media stepped right up to praise that guy. He literally got praise for doing nothing because the money disappeared so fast that peoples heads spun, and not one more literate child has walked from those diseased halls.

True Story.

 

[lancar]

I have to agree. This is a win-win How could this possibly be seen as something bad?

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Oh, the social network I hardly use anymore might get a little less money? I'm horrified.

 

[Olrod]

Boo-buggery-hoo.

Let Zynga take down Facebook when they go under. With any luck the next social networking website will have an actual User-friendly interface unlike Facebook's mishmash of a mess for a UI, and care about their client's privacy rights.

 

[Astoria]

Ahhh so this is why the talks of facebook charging users has popped up again. Eh it won't be a huge loss, everyone will just switch over to Google+ if it goes down. People might wake up then and realise that Zuckerburg isn't the second coming of Jesus.

 

[Callate]

Whatever one might think of Zynga (and I seem to be in with the majority in that I'm not exactly filled with delight when I hear their name), it doesn't take an MBA to realize that they simply grew too damn fast for their own good. There are too many Zynga games, and they're too derivative of one another, and too dependent on the same kind of Skinner Box techniques to hook their audience, an audience which was bound to burn out on being used that way sooner or later.

Yeah, it might be unfortunate for Facebook to lose that revenue, but someone should have rubbed two wits together and warned them that the essential financial plan wasn't bedrock to build upon.