In the tech world, the two main names remain Apple and Facebook, but this week, one tech concern took center stage by appearing to give one of the giants the brush-off.
As the tech site The Register pointed out, "Zynga (Nasdaq: ZNGA) may not exactly be integral to the survival of Facebook -- which recently revealed it derived 12% of its 2011 revenue from the online gaming outfit -- but the fact that the company behind Words With Friends has built its own network might make IPO-ready Mark Zuckerberg a bit twitchy."
A "platform for play" has been created by Zynga in an effort to bring its games to a wider audience. What this really means it that the firm doesn't want to just rely on Facebook for its users.
Up until now, Facebook has been essential to the San Francisco-based Zynga's business strategy with the company, creaming 93% of its revenue from the dominant social network.
"But now," says The Register, "it wants to be a destination site, too. Users can log in with their existing Facebook IDs, said Zynga. But the company is clearly keen to see how many people it can attract from outside of Zuckerberg's locked-down silo. In other words, it wants to make new 'friends'."
On Thursday, Zynga announced the Zynga Platform, a new platform designed to bring players new ways to play and more people to play with. As part of the initial roll out, Zynga will debut the beta release of Zynga.com, the company’s new destination for social games.
"In addition to serving up popular Zynga games," the company said in the release, "Zynga.com would let players discover and play social games created by third party game developers. These Platform partners will be able to reach new audiences and make their games even more social.
"In an effort to let players discover and play even more games on Zynga.com, for the first time ever, Zynga will enable third party developers to create and publish games on the Zynga Platform."
Zynga Inc. is the world's leading provider of social game services with more than 240 million monthly active users playing its games, which include CityVille, FarmVille, Words With Friends, Scramble With Friends.
The company’s stock soared in the final two sessions of the week, climbing more than 3% Friday to a new 52-week intraday high of $15.02. Its 52-week low lay just below $8.00 in early January.
Surely the events of the last week will see the company taking on lots of "friends", and perhaps some investors. But, proper due diligence is always encouraged.
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