近年来，社交网站Facebook的蓬勃发展引起了市场的广泛关注。最近高盛投资银行更是向Facebook公司投资5亿美元，助长该公司估值突破500亿美元。现在，Facebook社交网站可谓是声名显赫，无人不晓。

而同样近几年崛起的还有社交游戏开发巨头公司Zynga。Zynga是Facebook平台最大的游戏开发商。然而据游戏邦了解，尽管Zynga开发了诸如FarmVille，CityVille，Mafia Wars等热门社交游戏，并从中获得了丰厚收益，但Zynga公司仍无法像Facebook一样获得主流媒体的关注。

Facebook和Zynga之间的密切合作造就了彼此，但它们究竟是谁在依赖谁？二者单飞的情况又将如何呢？

Facebook的盈收来源

一直以来，世人都很好奇社交游戏收益究竟占Facebook社交网站的总收入的百分之几。众所周知，Zynga可是Facebook社交网站的最大广告商。然而，Facebook并不对外透露其盈收方式。这一做法十分明智。毕竟，如果外界一旦知道Facebook社交网站的盈利中50%至60%来源于社交游戏，这将严重影响业内对Facebook社交网站价值的评估。

近年来为了降低对社交游戏的依赖性，Facebook社交网站开始进军其他领域，并开发了面向品牌的广告平台，但目前据游戏邦分析，社交游戏仍是Facebook社交网站营收的主要来源。

Zynga促进Facebook的用户增长

Facebook用户每天花费在社交网站上的时间引起了广告商的广泛关注。然而实际上是Facebook用户对社交游戏投注的大量时间拉升了Facebook的平均登录时间。

Time Spent

相同的投资者

据游戏邦了解，Facebook和Zynga两家公司之间的联系可谓是千丝万缕。首先，Zynga公司首席执行官Mark Pincus就是Facebook社交网站的早期投资商这一，因此Facebook也成为了Zynga进军社交游戏领域的首选平台。另外更重要的是两家公司都得到了俄罗斯投资公司Digital Sky的大力支持。由此可见，该两家公司应该秉持着相同的发展目标。

Zynga能否脱离Facebook平台？

据游戏邦了解，去年Facebook向Zynga施压迫使其使用Facebook Credits作为唯一的社交游戏虚拟货币。在此之前，Zynga公司发售虚拟货币几乎无需成本，可以获得虚拟商品交易的全额利润。但自同意使用Facebook Credits起，Zynga公司便需向Facebook社交网站平台支付30%的提成。虽然Zynga认为这一合约很不公平，但就长远来看，Facebook社交网站为Zynga游戏提供了近6亿人的潜在玩家群体。

谷歌游戏平台杳无音讯

Google Games

去年夏天谷歌公司向Zynga投资2亿美元，并有传闻谷歌计划创建自己的社交游戏平台。当时看来谷歌公司有意进军社交游戏领域，并与Facebook展开一场角逐。然而预计2010年发布的谷歌社交游戏平台至今不见踪影。也许这将成为谷歌2011年社交网站策略的一部分。只要谷歌正式进入社交游戏市场，Zynga就多了一种Facebook之外的选择。但从目前的情形来看，谷歌尚不具备这种能力，它的社交游戏网站之路依旧任重道远。

最后，失去Zynga游戏的助益，Facebook社交网站虽然仍可以独立生存，但将对公司营收造成很大影响。而从Zynga公司的角度来看，支付30%的虚拟交易分成固然十分心疼，但毋庸置疑Zynga很难再找到比Facebook增长更快的平台。由此看来，虽然经济纷争难免让这两者产生摩擦，但因为它们拥有相同的投资商背景，同样以上市作为发展目标，所以相信这二者未来仍将保持紧密合作，不太可能分道扬镳。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

After a year of non stop hype stoked by events like the recent 50 billion valuation after a 500 million dollar investment from Goldman Sachs, there will be very few people on the planet who have not heard about Facebook.

Then there’s Zynga, the company that creates social games built on top of the Facebook platform, which has comparatively been flying under the radar apart from in tech circles. Even though Zynga produces popular games like Farmville, Cityville and Mafia Wars, the parent company Zynga has been more focused on generating huge amounts of revenue rather than generating the sort of mainstream press Facebook have been getting.

The two companies are intrinsically linked but who needs who more and could they live without each other?

Facebook Revenues

The big question I have is just how much of Facebook’s revenues are coming from social gaming? Zynga may be the biggest Facebook advertiser and that is not something that they can take lightly. The fact that Facebook doesn’t have to reveal its revenue sources is a good thing for them because if it was a case of Facebook getting 50 or 60% of their total revenues from social gaming that is something that could influence their valuation negatively. I believe social gaming makes up a huge part of Facebook’s revenues although they have made massive strides in other areas to open up parts of their advertising platform to brands and decrease their over dependency on social gaming.

The amount of time that people spend on Facebook every day is a great number to roll out to advertisers, but n.b.- that number is massively skewed by the 100s of millions playing social games for hours on end pushing up those average times.

Similar Investors

The companies have a lot of ties that link them together behind the scenes. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus was a very early investor in Facebook which has probably given him insight into where the company is headed from a strategic level. More importantly, both companies have very significant backing from Digital Sky Partners, the Russian investment firm, which means that they should have a common vision or at the very least a mediator to keep calm heads if things get ugly.

Could Zynga Go It Alone?

There have been a few behind the scenes rows like when Facebook put pressure on Zynga last year to start using its Facebook credit system. Zynga essentially sells virtual currency which costs little or nothing to produce and is nearly all profit. Introducing Facebook credits for its users means Zynga would be paying Facebook a 30% tax for using its platform, which Zynga thinks is unfair. It is however a fair price that is applied evenly across its entire platform and it’s a small price to pay in the long run for tapping into a community of over 600 million users.

Google Gaming Platform?

Things get slightly more complicated when you take into account that Google invested a couple hundred million into Zynga last summer and has plans to set up its own social gaming platform. It makes sense for Google to get into social gaming as a step to combat Facebook but the launch was meant to happen in 2010 and nothing has happened yet. You can expect that it has been pushed out to the middle of 2011 like the rest of Google’s +1 social networking strategies. If Google does enter the market in a serious way it will give Zynga an interesting alternative to Facebook’s platform but it all depends on the social networking capabilities that are built in and that is something that Google has not been good at in the past.

Better The Devil You Know

Facebook could live without Zynga. It would suffer a major blip in revenues if Zynga pulled out tomorrow but somebody else would move in, replicate the games and be willing to pay the percentage on credits. It hurts Zynga to pay such a large portion of its revenues over to Facebook but it’ll never find a better platform for fast growth. There are huge amounts of money involved and greed could see these bedfellows fall out at some stage but I’d imagine because they have similar investors, are both huge unstoppable juggernauts and are both headed for IPO that they’ll continue to live together and enjoy huge success.（Source：thenextweb）