由美国每日电讯报数字传媒编辑Emma Barnett撰文的一篇文章详细解析了zynga是如何开拓facebook社交游戏市场的。

mark pincus

三年前在facebook面向开发者推出开放平台后，zynga便敏锐地发现了虚拟交易有利可图的潜在大市场。

在推出诸如CafeWorld、Mafia Wars以及FrontierVille系列游戏之后（基本上每年都能推出三款主要的游戏力作），现在zynga已经有了3亿2000万的用户和据称高达55亿美元的市场估值。而他们将在数周后推出的3D新作cityville在启用之前又吊足了用户的胃口，据称该游戏将具有更深度的用户社交互动。

按照facebook首席执行官Mark Zuckerberg在旧金山举行的Web 2.0大会上所说的facebook要做的就是全力打造一个尽可能的社交环境。每一种类型的商业想要做得更加出类拔萃就需要率先去考量下他们在社交关系和人际互动方面是不是能够做得足够好。

在社交游戏上和在线游戏最大的区别是将单独的或者陌生人的游戏转变为朋友间的互动。而zynga则成功地在facebook平台上率先将这些理念发挥得淋漓尽致。当然无可否认的是facebook在这个平台上仍然掌控着局势走向的主动权，比如分成了zynga30%的虚拟交易营收，占据着改变这个平台规则的主动权等等。

据mark Pincus在web2.0上的说法称他的未来构想是让zynga公司的LOGO（小狗造型）成为人们习以为常的一个标志，也意味着说他们将着力去开拓出了facebook之外的空间。根据每日电讯的一段访谈显示mark Pincus的帝国梦想是让zynga成为像google一样深入人心的动词。（本文由游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译 转载请注明：游戏邦）

ynga, and its most famous creation, FarmVille, without a doubt put social network gaming on the map.

One of the first companies to take advantage of Facebook opening up its platform to developers, Zynga tapped into the highly lucrative market of virtual goods three years ago.

A series of games followed, such as CafeWorld, Mafia Wars and FrontierVille.

Zynga now has more than 320 million users, is reportedly worth $5.5 billion, releases on average three major games a year, and is expanding its studio presence around the world at pace. As people live their lives increasingly online, they want to do everything with their friends in one place – which is at the moment, with over 500 million registered members, is Facebook.

Pincus, an early Facebook and Napsta investor, is now focusing on making its latest games, such as CityVille, due to be released in beta over the coming weeks, as social as possible – with higher rates of gaming interaction between players.

The message from technology royalty, such as Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook’s founder and chief, at the annual Web 2.0 Summit held last week in San Francisco, was that the whole web needs to fully embrace social.

Every business which hopes to be the best in its category, needs ensure its web presence taps into the power of social connections and personal profiles.

As the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn, come under growing pressure from other technology companies and important digital thinkers, such as Tim Berners-Lee, to open up their social graphs to the rest of the web, the importance of social profiles across all websites is coming to the fore.

Gaming online used to cost a fair amount of money, with people often gaming alone or with people they didn’t know. With Zynga’s games, such as FarmVille, which is free to download and only available on the current largest social network, both problems are solved.

Pincus was effectively one of the first people to build a really successful platform on top of the hugely successful Facebook platform. Admittedly Facebook still holds considerable power over Zynga, taking a 30 per cent share of each virtual credit bought by Zynga game players, and controls the platform upon which Zynga so heavily relies.

However, with no warning, Zynga, and other developers who followed its hot trail, changed Facebook’s business overnight, making it the largest games platform online.

Pincus talked openly at the Web 2.0 Summit about his ambition to see his company’s dog logo everywhere, effectively untying Zynga’s future from a single social platform such as Facebook.

He wants to ‘dog activate’ the world, as the dog lover put it on stage. Pincus also wants to make ‘Zynga’ a verb.

Talking to The Telegraph in what is his first major UK interview since creating Zynga, said: “I want ‘Zynga’ to be become to a verb, like ‘to Google’ has. I want people to ‘Zynga’ each other and for the word to become completely aligned with gaming.” （source：telegraph）