Inside Facebook

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As Zynga Looks to IPO, Its Traffic on Facebook Stays High Posted: 29 May 2011 04:07 PM PDT Most developers on Facebook have many ups and downs, with an emphasis on the downs over the last 12 months or so as Facebook has cut back on viral channels. Zynga stands out not just for dwarfing the rest of the market, but because it has managed to keep traffic so high for so long. A look back at the past few years in AppData provides a quick explanation of Zynga’s story, that will get the attention of investors trying to decide how to value it when it reportedly files to go public later this year. The Data Timeline At the end of 2008, Zynga was in a pretty good position. It had figured out how to monetize through virtual goods in its first hit, Texas Hold’Em Poker. It was in the process of launching Mafia Wars and a long line of other text-based role-playing games on Facebook, MySpace and other social networks. It was on its way to dominating that category through copying the competition, then using a careful combination of aggressive viral tactics, gradual but consistently improving game quality, back-end scaling expertise to handle the incoming traffic at the right times, and everything else that would eventually become the so-called “Zynga Playbook.” It had 23.9 million monthly active users. (Note that you can access the full data history for Zynga and its games, in our AppData Pro tracking service.) Almost all of its growth since then came in 2009. It moved into the simulation category with the launch of FarmVille in June of that year, with the tailwind of Facebook’s spammily-designed Twitter style of news feed pushing the game far and wide across the social network. It also had capitalized on Facebook’s increasingly sophisticated advertising tool to cheaply and effectively reach users before most other developers (or other advertisers) were. Well-timed investments into all parts of the company, including fast hiring of experienced leaders in gaming, and in business and technical fields in other parts of Silicon Valley — a story that the company hasn’t talked about much yet. > Continue reading on Inside Social Games.

This Week’s Headlines From Across Inside Network Posted: 29 May 2011 08:00 AM PDT Here are all the latest headlines from around Inside Network this past week. Inside Mobile Apps Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms, and virtual goods. Monday, May 23rd, 2011 Monday Mobile Roundup: Foursquare-INQ, EFF’s Call to Apple & More Emerging Paid iOS Apps: New Content Breaths New Life Into Older Apps Apple Responds to Lodsys Threats, Says Developers Are Protected Casey’s Contraptions Rises Up iPad App Charts Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 Emerging Top-Grossing iOS Apps: Top Paid Apps Fill the Top Grossing List Microsoft Releases New Developers Tools for Windows Phone Nexon KartRider Rush Breaks Through 2 Million Downloads in 10 Weeks Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 TinyCo Launches $5 Million Fund To Finance Games From Third-Party Developers Simogo Brings a Bit of Charm to iOS With Bumpy Road Emerging Top Free Apps on iOS: High Noon, iQuarterback & More New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: TinyCo, PopCap Games, Roblox and More PopCap’s Second 4th & Battery Title, Candy Train, is Both Colorful and Challenging Thursday, May 26th, 2011 New Hires in Mobile: EA Mobile, Gameloft, Glu Mobile & More Building a Better Hospital With Game Insight’s Social-Mobile Title, My Clinic on iPad With Google Wallet, How Much Potential Will There Be For Third-Party Developers Room For Both The Familiar And The Unexpected in Glu’s Summer Lineup Friday, May 27th, 2011 Glue Boosts Second-Quarter Earnings Guidance, Stops Accounting for Incentivized Install Revenue Paypal-Google Lawsuit Reveals More About How Android Market Deal Went Awry Amazon Wants to Hire Game Designer to Create Mobile Social Games Friday Mobile Roundup: Margaritas, Lodsys Redux, iPhone 4 & More Inside Social Games Covering all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms. Sunday, May 22nd, 2011 The Road to Credits: Mid-Market Developers Experience Technical Difficulties, Experiment With New Promotions Monday, May 23rd, 2011 GagaVille Pushes FarmVille Toward the Top of This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU CrowdStar Secures $23 Million Series A Funding From Intel, Time Warner, The9 Rocket Ninja Seeing Retention Rise After Launching 3D Mode in Wrestler: Unstoppable “Facebook + Games” Equals a New Effort by Facebook to Communicate With Game Industry Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 Rocket Ninja’ Shr3d Engine Provides Boost in Social Gaming 3D Arms Race Richard Garriott’s 3D Portalarium Plugin Appears in A Mystical Land Hero’s Blend of City-Building and Adventure Sees Steady MAU Growth but Variable DAU Report: Zynga Filing for IPO This Week of Next Week Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 Deep Realms Doing Something on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Games by DAU Peak Games Finds Growth In Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, Secures $5 Million in Funding Nival North America to Bring Russian Strategy PC Series King’s Bounty to Facebook New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: 6waves, AdParlor, Kixeye and More Fortune Creek Poker Gives Card Sharks a Place to Visit Instead of a Game to Play Thursday, May 26th, 2011 New Hires in Social Gaming: Cie Games, CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate, & More Facebook Announces PayPal Payouts to Developers for Credit Revenue It’s Official: Kabam Announces $85M Fourth Round of Funding Tagged Looks to In-House Social Game Development for New Growth Trials of Elsword Experiments With Demoing A Full MMOG on Facebook Friday, May 27th, 2011 King.com’s Bingo Adventure Appears on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games LOLapps Side-Steps Sequels With Franchise Expansion in Ravenshire Castle Glu Boosts Second-Quarter Earnings Guidance, Stops Accounting for Incentivized Install Revenue Amazon Wants to Hire Game Designer to Create Facebook and Mobile Social Games Social Gaming Roundup: THQ, Supercell, Sim City, & More Inside Facebook Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers. Monday, May 23rd, 2011 Pages, Music, Badoo, Videos and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by MAU Featured Facebook Campaigns: Lancôme, Nivea, Cost Plus World Market, Allstate, Budweiser and Axe USA Network’s Chatter Aggregates Conversations About TV Shows From Facebook and More Platform Update: PHP SDK 3.0.0 Arrives, Client-Side Re-Authentication, & More Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 Bruno Mars, Subway, Turkey, Disney, Vin Diesel and Converse on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Efficient Frontier, Involver, Vitrue, Wildfire and More Facebook No Longer Blocking Comments for (Most) Pharmaceutical Pages Facebook Adds “Subscribe Via RSS” Option to Pages New Facebook Feature Has Users Post Recommended Pages to Wall, News Feed Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 Chase Giving, Luck, Astrology, Mobile, BandPage and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU Report: A More Official Spotify-Facebook Partnership Is Coming Soon New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Context Optional, AdParlor, PopCap Games and More ShopIgniter CEO Matt Compton on Raising $8M and the Growth of Ecommerce on Facebook Facebook Ecommerce: What Features Are Important in a Page Storefront Application Thursday, May 26th, 2011 Facebook Hires and Departures: Engineering, Account Management, Creative and More Facebook Careers Postings: Singapore, Recruiting, Engineering and More Facebook Announces PayPal Payouts to Developers for Credits Revenue BandRx: A Free Page Management App for Musicians That Matches Facebook’s Design Friday, May 27th, 2011 Friends, Photos, Videos, Weddings and More on This Week’s Top 2- Emergin Facebook Apps by MAU A New Facebook Lobbying Team Emerges to Match Increasing Political Scrutiny Facebook Platform Update: New Token Requirements, Photo and Video Graph APIs Facebook Roundup: Privacy, Europe, Mobile, Minors, Travel, Trading, Legal, Capital and Profanity

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