1）据Venturebeat报道，Zynga日前宣布公司已针对其社交游戏开发出更高速的数据中心基础设施，并将通过自己的开放平台向第三方游戏开发商推出这项技术。

该公司首席工程师Kostadis Roussos表示，他们使用这项新“优化游戏机制”技术创建了快速操作的街机射击游戏《Bubble Safari》，支持玩家体验游戏中的快速多人模式。

zyngas-kostadis-roussos(from businessinsider.com)

Zynga通过对自己的数据基础设施zCloud进行调整，接管了原先设置于Amazon.com的80%社交游戏服务器，极大削减了Zynga在数据管理方面的成本。

Zynga目前有2.9亿MAU和6500万DAU（游戏邦注：在移动平台的DAU超过2200万），其玩家遍布175个国家。

2）Zynga产品高级副总裁及《FarmVille》开发者Mark Skaggs在公司日前的新闻发布会上表示，新游戏《TheVille》将于近日上线。从预告视频来看，该游戏风格类似于《YoVille》以及EA Playfish的《模拟人生社交版》，支持玩家建设拥有多个房间、饰品和道具的房子。

theville(from games)

但与《模拟人生社交版》不同的是，《TheVille》玩家可以同时造访多个好友，可直接与好友的虚拟形象互动，在游戏内外建立联系。

3）据insidesocialgames报道，Zynga股票在6月26日开始反弹，每股售价超过6美元，这是近两周来的最高售价点。观察者称这种现象或与当日召开的Zynga Unleashed大会有关，但在该大会结束时，Zynga股票又降至每股5.64美元（6月7日时也出现这个售价点，之后就降至每股4.84美元）。

Zynga stock(from insidesocialgames)

Zynga股票在今年二三月份之间保持每股10美元售价，但自4月26日Zynga公布净亏损8540万美元之后就开始下滑，而Facebook在5月18日进行的IPO更令其股票持续跌至历史最低点。

4）德国社交游戏开发商Wooga日前宣布公司成员已从三年前成立时的4人扩增至200人。

Wooga成员在2月份突破150人时，当时该公司曾宣布计划在2013年底招聘100人，但目前Wooga每月就能收到近2000份求聘申请。值得注意的是，其中有三分之一求职者是女性。

wooga-with-hosts(from tabsie.com)

Wooga称公司有信心在今年底将团队规模扩大至250人，并称移动平台将成为公司关注重心。

5）eMarketer最近报告指出，Facebook平台上的Marketplace广告去年收益达18.9亿美元，而Premium广告则是12.6亿美元。但Marketplace广告一向被认为是设计糟糕的内容，并且点击率极低，甚至低至0.034%，而谷歌广告点击率则是2%。

fb-marketplace ads(from dmkthinks.org)

因此分析师Debra Williamson认为，广告商不可过度看重点击率，而应重视用户点击之后的情况，而这正是Facebook的长处，它提供了多种支持广告技术公司追踪用户粘性的途径，以助广告商快速调整自己的广告活动从而获得理想的用户粘性。

SchoolVille(from games)

6）据games.com报道，开发商ViceAge Entertainment最近发布结合了《Tiny Tower》/《Small Street》玩法的iPhone、iPad游戏《SchoolVille》。Zynga之前曾阻止其他开发商的游戏使用“Ville”这个后缀，这款游戏最终是否将更名或者从应用商店中移除这一点值得关注。（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）Zynga rolls out faster server infrastructure across all its games — and opens its API

Dean Takahashi

Zynga said today that it has developed a faster infrastructure for its social games and will make the technology available to third-party game developers through its open third-party platform.

The company made the announcement at its Zynga Unleashed press event. Zynga chief engineer Kostadis Roussos said at the event that the new “optimized game mechanics” technology helped it create the fast-action arcade-shooter game Bubble Safari, which allows players to shoot bubbles at fruit hanging from trees at a fast rate. Starting today, users will be able to play fast-action multiplayer sessions in the Bubble Safari game. That’s a feat that no other social game companies can match today, Zynga claimed.

It may sound simple, but Zynga believes it has a competitive advantage. Zynga was able to do this, Roussos said, by custom-tailoring its data center infrastructure, dubbed zCloud, for its own needs. It took about 80 percent of its social game servers off Amazon.com and began hosting them itself in its own “private cloud.” For every three servers Zynga needed on its public cloud, it only needs one server in its private cloud; that helped cut the cost of its infrastructure dramatically.

This is how Zynga can host 290 million monthly active users (those who log in during a month) and 65 million daily active users. It has more than 22 million daily active players on mobile, and it has players in 175 countries. Across Zynga games, 6 billion neighbor connections currently exist, and Zynga games have been played an astounding 1.8 trillion minutes. Zynga was able to launch its CastleVille game in the fall on Facebook and get 2.8 million players in a week.

Today, millions of players connect to Zynga games at the same time. Zynga releases 100 updates to its games every day, and it tests thousands of features in a given week to see if they are fun. The company’s players engage in 1 million activities every second.

“We can find out within minutes if millions of players enjoyed a change we made in a game,” Roussos said. “That helps us know what features are fun.”

Zynga will make the fast-action game mechanics available to third-party developers through something it calls Project Darwin, which is also known as the Zynga API (applications programming interface). Zynga’s technology allows it to reduce the amount of code that is hosted on both servers and on a user’s machine dramatically. This also cuts the number of servers Zynga must buy.

“It goes faster for game players, cuts costs, and cuts code in half,” Roussos said. “It’s like magic.”

In a group meeting with journalists afterward, Jim Veevaert, general manager at Zynga’s arcade division, said that the company is taking full advantage of the new features in the Flash 11 platform, which allows a game to take advantage of any graphics hardware in a computer, as opposed to just its central processing unit.（source:venturebeat）

2）Zynga’s TheVille tries to kill two birds with one stone on Facebook

by Joe Osborne

“TheVille is a place and people game,” Zynga Senior VP of Product and FarmVille creator Mark Skaggs claimed on stage during the monolithic social games company’s Zynga Unleashed press event just moments ago, as of this writing. It’s the next big ‘Ville game from Zynga that’s due to launch on Facebook as early as tomorrow, June 27.

But it’s also an interesting method of attack for the developer. Based on the trailer and game demonstration shown during the event, TheVille looks as if Zynga’s YoVille and The Sims Social by EA and Playfish had a visit from the stork. The game allows players to build out their own home with multiple rooms, decorations and functional items to show off to their friends.

More like YoVille and less like The Sims Social, however, players can invite several friends over simultaneously (though asynchronously) in TheVille. Then, those players can interact with their friends’ fully-customizable avatars directly, fostering relationships both in-game and out.

Players’ Facebook page activity will be accessible to players in-game, and their friends will be able to comment on their actions from within YoVille, thanks to a feature known as Z Talk. What does this mean for YoVille and, by extension, The Sims Social? We’ll see in the coming weeks, and based on our hands-off impressions.（source:games）

3）Zynga’s stock rises, then tanks during Unleashed event

Mike Thompson

Zynga’s shares started strong today, trading at over $6 a share, the highest trading price in over two weeks for the stock. The rise is likely due to speculation about the company’s Zynga Unleashed event occurring today, which you can read our liveblog coverage of. By the end of the presentation, though, shares were below where they started, selling for $5.64.

At the time of writing, the stock is selling for $5.64 a share (screenshot below captured just before the low ebb). The last time the stock was at this price was on June 7, shortly before the stock dropped as far as $4.84 a share.

Although the stock managed to stay above $10 a share in February and March, it’s been struggling since the company’s last earnings call on April 26, when it announced a net loss of $85.4 million. Shares contributed to drop for several weeks before plummeting in the wake of Facebook’s problematic IPO on May 18. Since that point, the stock’s fallen steadily, hitting the aforementioned low.

Investors have seemed wary of putting more money into the company because of a perceived over-reliance on Facebook for its business model. Zynga’s new announcement that it’s the world’s largest mobile developer, as well as the newly-revealed Zynga Partners for Mobile program, may help change this perception. We’ll update this story at market close.（source:insidesocialgames）

4）Wooga touts growing gains as headcount hits 200 in 3 years

by James Nouch

Berlin-based social developer Wooga has announced its employee roster has just hit 200, with the company having grown from a base of just four when it was founded little over three years ago.

Such a milestone doesn’t signify the end of the company’s growth, however.

Founder and CEO Jens Begemann has gone on record to explain that, when competing in the social gaming scene, it’s grow or die.

The growing game

“We are part of a competitive market which requires fast growth,” said Begemann.

“With a growth rate of two new employees per week, we’ve been lucky enough to find that balance between growth and sustainability that has enabled us to keep our relaxed company culture intact.”

When the company’s headcount was approaching the 150 mark back in February, Wooga unveiled its intention to hire 100 people by the end of 2013.

Now, the studio claims it’s receiving almost 2,000 job applications a month.

Mobile matters

“The great amount speaks for the quality of our work,” said head of HR Gitta Blatt.

“It is quite remarkable that a third of our applications come from women, a good ratio for the gaming and tech industry.

“We are confident that Wooga will meet its expected growth plans – to grow to 250 employees – by the end of the year.”

Looking ahead, Begemann has confirmed mobile will be Wooga’s priority, with the firm loosening Facebook’s hold over its business moving forward.

“I am excited to say that currently half of the company is working on new games, with a clear focus on bringing the Wooga experience to new mobile titles,” Begemann concluded.

The firm’s shift away from the social network mirrors similar moves made by rivals such as Zynga, with the industry reacting to declining DAUs on the platform.（source:pocketgamer）

5）Want to be a better Facebook advertiser? Be fast and look beyond fan numbers, says report

Ricardo Bilton

Are Facebook’s Marketplace ads a waste of cash?

That was one the many questions asked last month when General Motors beat a high-profile retreat from the Facebook ad platform.

But according to a report from marketing research firm eMarketer, General Motors had it all wrong: Facebook’s Marketplace ads do work, and plenty of advertisers can prove it.

Facebook’s numbers support the claim: Revenue from Marketplace ads accounted for $1.89 billion last year, topping the $1.26 billion from Premium ads. There may be concerns about their efficacy, but a lot of advertisers are still investing in them.

In spite of this, Facebook’s Marketplace ads get no respect, said eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson.

“We laugh at them because they don’t apply to us, or they’re poorly designed. They’re the ads we love to hate,” she said.

Click-through rates on Facebook Marketplace ads are abysmally bad, hitting as low as .034 percent by one estimate. Rates for Google ads, in comparison, come in at a little over two percent.

But focusing too much on click-throughs is a mistake, Williamson said. “The bigger deal  is what happens after the click,” she said. That’s a strength of Facebook, which offers a variety of ways for advertising technology companies to track engagement.

In a similar vein, Williamson said that highly effective advertisers look beyond fan numbers. “You want to attract the right kind of fans,” she said. These are the kind of fans that not only click, but share and engage.

This notion flies in the face of previous assumptions, which held that the more Facebook fans a brand had, the better off it would be. But advertisers are quickly realizing that a blind pursuit of Facebook fans isn’t an end-all solution.

“A lot of advertisers are scratching their heads on what to do with all of these Facebook fans,” she said. “So they’re pulling back.”

Another effective strategy might sound a bit brash, but it works: Just launch. In her interviews with companies, Williamson found that oftentimes the most effective strategy is to just let the advertising technology do the work. “You give up a bit of control, but  the results often pay off,” she said.

Speed is a key component prized by effective Facebook advertisers. Marketplace advertisements report results within 10 to 15 minutes, allowing advertisers to very quickly turn around and tweak their campaigns. This is a component that is sure to be come more prominent as Facebook launches its real-time bidding platform, Facebook Exchange.

Facebook isn’t off the hook, either. Williamson says that the company needs to better combine its premium and marketplace ad programs to make it easer for advertisers to track and manage both simultaneously.（source:venturebeat）

6）SchoolVille: It’s Tiny Tower meets Small Street all over again

by Brandy Shaul

Apparently, the folks at ViceAge Entertainment didn’t get the memo that Zynga doesn’t appreciate others throwing around the -Ville name, as they’ve released a new Tiny Tower / Small Street clone by the name of SchoolVille on iPhone and iPad. Assuming the game only gets slapped with a name change and not an entire removal from the store, here’s what you can expect from this uniquely themed take on the horizontal “tower” genre.

SchoolVille sees you building classrooms from left to right along a never-ending roadway. In between these school rooms, you can build various facilities to earn profits. In this way, the classrooms serve as homes and the facilities are businesses, if you’re looking for a comparison to Tiny Tower (or any of the many games exactly like it). Different goods require different amounts of coins to purchase and take varying amounts of time to run out, but all of this goes towards the cycle of building new rooms to house more students, only to build more facilities to produce and sell more products.

There are some light missions to complete along the way, like ordering specific goods or building certain structures, but the majority of gameplay will be spent either transporting kids in the school bus or waiting for goods to be stocked / sold. The game’s graphics are fairly cute, as the school theme is something that we at least haven’t seen before, and the soundtrack is also quite cheerful. Ultimately though, this is another horizontal tower builder on the App Store, which was already full of them.

If you’re interested in trying out SchoolVille for yourself, you can now download it for free on your iPhone or iPad, but don’t be surprised if the name suddenly changes down the road.（source:games）