1）据彭博社报道，Facebook目前在私募资本市场的估值达940亿美元（游戏邦注：Facebook在股市估值为750亿至1000亿美元）。

facebook like(from pammarketingnut.com)

Facebook计划通过IPO集资50亿美元，目前MAU达8.45亿，并拥有利润极为可观的广告业务。互联网IPO专家认为，Facebook的1000亿美元估值较为乐观，并且在IPO之后其身价仍将持续上张。

2）Zynga德国工作室主管及首席技术官Paul Bakaus（他是Aves Engine开发者，该工作室是Zynga主要的HTML5游戏部门）在最近媒体采访中表示，他以Zynga Jukebox这个开源项目为例，指出开发针对HTML5游戏制作声音文件其实并不难。

zynga-paul Bakaus(from games)

但他也指出，HTML5的棘手之处在于它并非游戏开发者所熟悉的领域，但从总体上看，开发HTML5游戏所获优势要大于劣势。在他看来，当前开发HTML5游戏的技术已经成熟，但用其开发强大的3D游戏尚欠火候，若是开发2D游戏则基本不存在问题。

3）社交游戏开发商Kabam最近将位于红木城的总部迁至旧金山湾地区，落户地点是795 Folsom Street，面积为6.3万平方英尺，可容纳400名员工。

该公司最近刚收购Fearless Studios并计划向3D社交游戏领域进军。

Kabam office(from games)

4）据Net Application报道，谷歌浏览器Chrome市场份额已从去年12月的19.11%降至1月份的18.94%，这是Chrome最近两年首次出现的下滑现象，而IE在同一时期却从51.87%增长至52.96%（游戏邦注：观察者认为，这有可能与Windows XP在1月份市场份额或使用率的增长有关）。

google-chrome(from digimantra.com)

而火狐浏览器同一时期则从21.83%下降至20.88%，Safari也从4.97%降为4.9%，Opera则从1.66%略增至1.67%。

5）Hitwise最近发布数据显示，目前在美国每5个页面访问量就有一者来自Facebook，也就是说Facebook占据了20%的美国页面访问量。

从网站粘性来看，用户每次对Facebook的平均访问时间为20分钟，其中以女性用户为主，在过去三个月（截止1月28日），来自女性用户的流量占57%。

visit share by age(from Hitwise)

25-34岁的Facebook用户占比23%，但55岁以上用户比例也高达20%；与之形成对比的是Google+，其用户主力军是18-24岁的年轻群体（占比29%），Twitter这一年龄段的用户群体占比达30%，而Facebook的同类用户仅占比18%。在2012年1月份，96%的Facebook访客属于回头用户。

visitors rate(from Hitwise)

6）据games.com报道，Zynga最近向用户发送了一封调查邮件，旨在获知玩家对哪些题材的游戏创意更感兴趣。观察者称，从邮件内容可以猜测，Zynga下一款游戏有可能是烹饪题材的作品，或将采用现实世界的美食品牌等内容，并融入Bobby Flay、Rachael Ray等世界级大厨的元素。

amelia-laptop(from games)

但目前尚无法得知这是否表明Zynga有意开发一款类似于《Cafe World》的游戏，或者这仅是Zynga收集用户反馈的举措之一。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Facebook worth $94B, private market says

Jennifer Van Grove

Now that Facebook is fast on its way to becoming a public company, and its financials have been laid bare, there’s just one question that remains unanswered: What is Facebook actually worth?

A private market transaction completed Thursday may provide us with best the answer yet.

One hundred thousand Class B common stock shares were sold for $40 a pop on SharesPost, according to information obtained by Bloomberg News and confirmed by the private capital market. The sale, factoring in a fully diluted total share count of 2.35 billion, values the social network at $94 billion.

Facebook filed to become a public company Wednesday, and its expected to raise $5 billion in its initial public offering. The company, which touts 845 million monthly active users and an extremely profitable advertising business, could be valued between $75 and $100 billion on its stock market debut.

But the $100 billion figure is fairly optimistic, says one Internet IPO expert.

“The $100 billion number that has been circulated so widely … is all based on 5 precent of the shares being worth potentially $5 billion,” Peter Adriaens, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan’s Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, said in an interview with VentureBeat yesterday. “You can’t just apply a multiplier using 5 percent of the shares.”

Of course, speculation as to what the social networking company is actually worth will continue to run rampart leading up to and even following its IPO, especially considering that Facebook has veiled the important particulars behind its prized money-maker.（source:venturebeat）

2）Zynga Germany’s Paul Bakaus on what’s the deal with HTML5 [Interview]

by Joe Osborne

HTML5. It sounds like one of C-3PO’s buddies on Tatooine, doesn’t it? While it’s certainly not as cool as a personal assistant droid, HTML5 packs a lot of potential for not just social games, but the games industry on the whole. Still fuzzy on what it is? Here’s a brief description that pertains to what you care about: HTML5 is a web programming language still in development that allows developers to create games within the browser that require no additional downloads and can be played across computers and smartphones effortlessly for the gamer (and created that way almost effortlessly for the developer).

Over the past year, Zynga has expressed its interest in HTML5 game creation, namely through founding Zynga Germany. (Yes, the same Zynga that founded its gaming empire on Flash, the most common tool used to play and create games in the browser.) Largely guided by Paul Bakaus, CTO and creator of the Aves Engine that attracted Zynga initially, Zynga Germany is behind much of the company’s recent HTML5 games in one way or another.

Take Zynga Jukebox, for instance. It’s an open source project headed by Bakaus that, in short, makes audio in HTML5 games easier to implement for game makers. (See? We told you HTML5 was still in development.) “Zynga Jukebox is being used in Words With Friends [on Facebook, also built using HTML5]. Not only are we writing code, we’re also doing a lot of research,” Bakaus reveals to us. “Research includes asking the community for input. So, we’re trying to open up our technology not only for the greater benefit to build HTML5 games, because we really want to see if we can accelerate the market as a whole, but also we really value input from the community.”

Those who’ve been following the intersection of HTML5 and Facebook games will remember when the Zynga Germany technology head likened making games with HTML5 to experimenting with a pain machine. If that’s the case, then why bother?

“The trick of HTML5 is that it’s an unknown territory for game developers. Anything you try that’s unknown will feel dangerous at first,” Bakaus admits. “Also, HTML5 hadn’t been built with games in mind, and now it’s something we’re working on with the W3C [Worldwide Web Consortium] to really drive gaming. It’s always early until someone starts, right? The power that you gain by creating games in HTML5 far outweighs the pain.”

After picking the guy’s brain for 30 minutes, it’s clear that Bakaus (pictured) is in it for the long haul when it comes to HTML5 games. And it seems as if he’s inspired the rest of Zynga to follow suit. In 2011 alone, the company launched five HTML5-based version of its games, including FarmVille Express, Mafia Wars Shakedown, Zynga Poker and two iterations of Words With Friends. In January, the developer gave CityVille the “Express” treatment, too.

“I’m really excited about the opportunity to type in a URL or just open Safari on the iPhone and being able to play in less than a second … and play right away without launching any software,” Bakaus says, but “What I’m really worried about is getting developer traction.” In other words, HTML5 isn’t exactly the most popular way to make games, so what’s Zynga going to do about it?

“We’re really trying to get out a lot of the components that make life a lot easier for people. Things that people fear most–like HTML5 sound, for instance–we’re trying to work against that,” Bakaus says. “I think that right now, few people are aware of the games that you can build right now on HTML5. I think it’s totally imaginable that you can create an absolutely fun, fast-paced, interactive, sprite-based game on HTML5 right now. It’s just that people are still afraid of how far we’ve got, since no one really writes about it with focus on games.”

And that’s just the thing. Most iPhone and Android game creators gloss over HTML5, because they think it can’t yet create the experience gamers are going to get in (or create cash flow like), say, Angry Birds. To the naysayers that think HTML5 games can’t make money without being on an app store, Bakaus points them to tools like PhoneGap. But for those who think HTML5 simply isn’t ready for prime time, Zynga Germany’s resident techie says:

“I believe that the tech is ready to build those games. I think that the tech is not yet ready to build great 3D games since it’s just about browser share penetration. But for 2D games and isometric games, it’s the right time.”（source:games）

3）Dragons of Atlantis maker gets comfy in San Francisco, opens global HQ

by Joe Osborne

Kabam, social game maker behind strategy hits like Dragons of Atlantis and Edgeworld, likes San Francisco, Calif. … a lot. So much so, in fact, that the company has relocated its global headquarters to the city by the bay. The proverbial gaming mecca of the U.S, Kabam already had quite a presence in the Bay Area, with studios in San Francisco and Redwood City.

The company was previously headquartered in Redwood City, but has signed a multi-year lease for 63,000 square feet of office space at 795 Folsom Street, home to the likes of the mighty Twitter. The new location will have room for 400 employees to facilitate Kabam’s rapid growth as it plans to release more social games in conjunction with its Redwood City studio.

“Kabam’s new San Francisco location will unite our Bay Area offices into a single fantastic space hosting our studio, distribution and corporate operations to maximize cross-team collaboration,” Kabam CEO Kevin Chou said in a release. “With great access to transportation, it gives us a wonderful space to build out as we recruit for our next phase of growth.”

This news follows Kabam’s acquisition of Fearless Studios with the intent to transition into 3D social gaming. Coupled with the company’s move onto the desktop-based social games through Pokki, Kabam is going all the way to convince “hardcore” gamers that Facebook is a place to play. That is, if it can beat both the competition and the naysayers.（source:games）

4）Google Chrome Market Share Drops For First Time In Two Years

Sarah Perez

Google’s move to demote the Chrome website in search rankings in January led to a decline in browser market share, according to new data from Net Applications. Google’s Chrome web browser dropped from 19.11% in December to 18.94% in January, the firm found. Meanwhile, among the other browsers, only Internet Explorer saw significant gains during the month, going from 51.87% in December to 52.96% in January.

The reason behind Chrome’s drop – the first in two years – is likely the advertising scandal Google found itself last month. Google had hired a third-party ad agency Unruly Media to drive views of a new Chrome video by paying bloggers to post it on their own websites. One blogger linked back to the Chrome download page, without using a “nofollow” attribute which would have prevented the page from getting an extra boost. The move was in clear violation of Google’s own paid link policy put in place to combat spam. Penalties for actions like this range from a month to a year of penalized search rank.

Google ended up doing the right thing and demoting the Chrome download page (www.google.com/chrome) for at least 60 days by setting its rank to zero. Previously, Chrome ranked #2 in a search for “browser,” but after the demotion, it was #50. Today, the Chrome website is showing up on page 6 of Google Search – in other words, practically invisible.

Chrome’s loss, for now at least, is IE’s gain. In fact, TechCrunch itself saw similar trends in January, much to our surprise (shock/horror). IE was ahead of both Firefox and Chrome for referral traffic mid-month. Our data showed that it was (TC parent company) AOL traffic that was so IE-friendly.

But that seems to be a coincidence. According to Net Applications, Windows XP’s market share grew in January, going from 0.67 points to 47.19 points, something that could have contributed to IE’s bump. To be clear, Windows XP didn’t necessarily see more users, it saw more usage. Maybe the typical year-end wrap-up work at businesses led to increased XP usage, as IE6 still powers some business applications? Or maybe browser market share numbers pulled from sources like Net Applications should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

For what it’s worth, other browsers saw dips, too, including Firefox, which went from 21.83% to 20.88%, and Safari, which dropped from 4.97% to 4.90%. Opera, saw a tiny gain from 1.66% to 1.67%. More data is available here on the Net Applications website.（source:techcrunch）

5）Hitwise: Facebook.com Now Accounts For 1 In Every 5 Pageviews On The Web (In The U.S.)

Rip Empson

In case you happened to be the victim of a day-long coma yesterday, it was a very exciting day for Mark Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley, and that quaint little social network we’ve all come to know, love, and be terrified of. Facebook filed its S-1 on Thursday with the crystal clear intent to go public on a market near you very soon, and will be raising $5 billion ahead of its IPO at an expected valuation of between $75 and $100 billion.

The company’s filing revealed some significant (or perhaps mind-melting) stats, including the fact that Facebook is seeing 845 million users every month, half of whom are daily users, and half of whom are mobile users. Zuck still owns 28 percent of the company, among other things; really that was just the beginning.

In fact, there was so much excitement and noise around Facebook’s IPO yesterday that the volume of visitors looking to check out Facebook’s filing for themselves succeeded in crashing the SEC’s website. Hitwise tells us that SEC.gov apparently saw a 15 percent increase in total visits, compared to the day before and a 42 percent compared to previous Thursday. And guess who was the number two source of traffic for the site? That’s right, TechCrunch.com — coming in less than 3 percent behind the top source, Google.com. Thanks to you, readers, we gave the SEC all the traffic they could handle. And apparently more.

Today, Heather Dougherty, Director of Research at Hitwise shared some further stats, which provide a great follow-up to yesterday’s IPO madness. Yes, a $75 to $100 billion valuation is enough to marinate on, but just how much traffic — and what kind is — Facebook.com generating? While this data is from January, many readers may already be familiar with a lot of this, but it’s just further evidence of how colossal Facebook’s share of the market has become — both at home and abroad.

For starters, Hitwise found that Facebook.com is now seeing one out of every eleven visits in the U.S., and one out of five pageviews online in the U.S. takes place on Facebook.com. Yep, 20 percent of pageviews in the U.S. happen on the Facebooks. [Insert Myspace dig here.]

Furthermore, in terms of engagement, the average visit time on Facebook.com is 20 minutes, and breakdown of male to female in Facebook’s visitors, shows that the social network is more popular among women, as 57 percent of its traffic for the last 3 months, ending January 28th, came from the ladies.

Meanwhile, the ages of Facebook.com visitors shows that the breakdown of its its visit share by age compares favorably to the online population, as you can see in the graph to the right.

As Erick said yesterday, Facebook managed to report $1 billion in profits for 2011, which is a fairly exact number, considering all of the variables at play. It could be that Zuckerberg managed accounting to come out at this round, even number, a sign to investors that the company has everything completely under control. Investors love predictability.

And on that note, beyond the average of 20 minutes users are spending on the site, 96 percent of of visitors to Facebook.com were returning visitors in January 2012. Hitwise’s numbers also show that, in terms of reaching affluent users, Facebook’s size allowed the site to win 499,949,430 visits from the most affluent income group, ahead of YouTube at 223,732,591 visits and Twitter at 15,166,795 visits. Facebook makes billionaires and caters to them.

Further adding to its accolades, when it comes to search, “Facebook” happens be the most searched term in the U.S., with Facebook-related terms accounting for 14 percent of the top search clicks. is the most searched term in the US and Facebook-related terms account for 14% of the top search clicks.（source:techcrunch）

6）Zynga survey hints at possible new cooking game

by Brandy Shaul

If you have agreed to receive the occasional email from Zynga, you might have received a new survey in your inbox this week, asking for your opinions on a few Zynga games, and also giving you a chance to rate the potential of some new game ideas. While the majority of the questions are fairly basic (how often do you play a specific game, etc.), the survey quickly turns to the heart of the matter, detailing what could possibly be a new game in the company’s lineup. Of course, Zynga wants to know what you think of the game concept first.

“Cook delicious food! Craft over 200 recipes in your world-class kitchen using fresh, exotic ingredients collected from local merchants, your garden, and your friends. Use top appliances to whip up amazing dishes that delight your customers and friends, and build the restaurant of your dreams.”

From there, we’re allowed to rate various features that could potentially be in this as-of-now unconfirmed game. We might be able to visit restaurants owned by real world celebrity chefs (Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, etc.), cook dishes using ingredients from real world brands, or cook dishes on state of the art kitchen equipment. All in all, there are tons of options here surrounding the use of real world brands or celebrities in this game concept. Could Zynga be planning to create a cooking game with direct involvement from some of these chefs, or even the Food Network as a whole? Or, is this all really just a large brain-storming session looking for fan feedback?

Either way, it’s definitely easy to say that this game concept is incredibly familiar to Cafe World (in fact, the ingredient collection feature was already released in the game’s Signature Dish event), so it will be interesting to see if anything actually comes from it (perhaps this could be Cafe World 2?). If you wish to take the survey yourself, you can do so by clicking right here.（source:games）