北京时间1月6日消息，据游戏邦了解，Zynga将收购社交浏览器开发商Flock。这是Zynga最近几个月完成的第8笔收购。

Flock成立于2005年1月1日，总部位于美国加州Menlo Park。到目前为止，Flock已经获得了将近3000万美元的风投，不过最后一轮融资还是在2008年。目前尚不清楚Zynga收购Flock的价格。消息人士称，谷歌和Twitter也曾参与竞购Flock，或许是为了获得Flock的优秀技术人才。

据游戏邦了解，2005年，Flock推出了其社交浏览器。在Twitter和Facebook风靡全球之前，“社交”意味着撰写博客和社交书签。但Flock的产品并未引起轰动。在经过几年的努力之后，Flock从火狐内核转而使用Chromium内核，但用户数量并没有显著增加。

Flock Browser

这是Zynga最近几个月完成的第8笔收购。今年5月，Zynga收购了总部位于北京的游戏工作室XPD，6月收购了社交游戏公司Challenge Games，8月收购了日本社交游戏公司Unoh Games，8月收购了美国波士顿社交游戏公司Conduit Labs，9月收购了德国游戏引擎开发商Dextrose，10月收购了美国达拉斯社交游戏开发商Bonfire Studios，12月收购了美国得克萨斯州的游戏公司Newtoy。

Flock总裁兼首席执行官肖恩·哈尔丁(Shawn Hardin)通过博客宣布了这一消息：

我要很高兴地宣布，Flock团队将加入社交游戏巨头Zynga。

本月我们迎来了Flock成立六周年纪念日，从成立之初，我们就一直坚信社交的转型力量。我们知道，社交网络将改变我们的互联网生活，因此我们努力使在线社交生活更加便捷，更利于用户发现、享受和共享社交关系与内容。另外，我们在开发优秀产品方面拥有专业水准和激情，带着这种水准和激情加入全球最热门、最具创新力的公司之一，真是一件极为兴奋的事情。

拥有超过2.5亿用户的Zynga已经引起了整个世界的关注，他们在理解社交游戏用户需求、提供极受欢迎的游戏平台方面的专业水平堪称传奇。更重要的是，他们仅仅是一家成立不久的公司。

我们的团队将帮助Zynga实现他们的目标，即为任何用户、任何时间、任何平台打造最有趣味性的社交游戏。

Flock对产品和用户的专注使得我们在全球范围内拥有了超过1000万用户，其中两款产品进入了Facebook十款最流行桌面应用之列。我们感谢用户一贯的支持与厚爱，并很高兴能够进入一个新的平台，分享我们在优秀用户体验与技术方面的激情。

新年快乐!

肖恩·哈尔丁（本文为Cnet科技资讯网/cnetnews.com.cn编译，游戏邦/gamerboom.com转发分享，转载请注明来源：Cnet科技资讯网和游戏邦）

Zynga is acquiring Flock, a beleaguered startup founded in 2005 by Bart Decrem and Geoffrey Arone, we’ve confirmed. The deal should be announced shortly.

The company has raised nearly $30 million in venture capital, although the last round was closed in 2008. We do not know the terms of the acquisition. Both Google and Twitter were also bidding for Flock, we’ve heard from one source – perhaps to get Flock’s engineering talent, which is very highly regarded.

Flock first launched it’s social browser in 2005, and we wrote about it in August of that year. At the time, prior to Twitter and the rise of Facebook, “social” meant writing blogs and social bookmarking, and not much else. Flock was not a hit.

It struggled over the years, eventually switching from using from Mozilla to Chromium as its core. But usage was never really there. And now they have a well-backed competitor in a market that’s never been proven to exist.

This is Zynga’s eighth acquisition in as many months: XPD in Beijing (May), Challenge Games in Austin (June), Unoh Games in Tokyo (August), Conduit Labs in Boston (August), Dextrose AG in Frankfurt (September), Bonfire Studios in Dallas (October) and Newtoy Inc. in McKinney, Texas (December). Lots of acquisitions, and lots of hiring.

Update: From the Flock blog:

I’m very excited to announce that the Flock team will be joining the social gaming phenomenon, Zynga.

This month marked Flock’s six-year anniversary and, from the beginning, we’ve always believed in the transformative power of social. We knew that it would change everything we do online, so we worked hard to make it easier and more rewarding for you to discover, enjoy and share the relationships and content you’re passionate about. And so, it is incredibly exciting and rewarding for us to take our expertise and passion for great products to one of the hottest and most innovative companies in the world.

With over a quarter of a billion users, Zynga has captured the imagination of the world. Their dedication to understanding what social game users want and to delivering a wildly popular gaming platform is already legendary. And, they’ve only just gotten started…

Our team will help Zynga in achieving their goal of building the most fun, social games available to anyone, anytime – on any platform.

Flock’s dedication to its products and users allowed us to achieve over 10 million users around the world with two products on the Facebook top 10 list of the most popular desktop apps. We thank our users for their unwavering support and dedication, and we’re thrilled to be going to a platform that shares our passion for combining great user experience and technology. What an awesome way to kick off 2011!

Best wishes for a Happy New Year,

Shawn Hardin（Source：Techrunch）