Gadget Row

Archive for March, 2012

Social networking websites have given new heights to internet. Each day millions of users access these social networking websites to stay in touch with their friends. Such is the popularity of these websites that people have also started using them as a commercial platform and use it for the promotion and marketing of their brands and products.

However, there was a time people got bored of these social websites and were looking for alternate ways to kill their time. It was then that these websites introduced free online social games on their platforms. On these social games, one could play for hours, play against their friends, and compare score with friends as well compare score with other players across the world. Soon these games became an addiction.

When one is talking about social games, one cannot forget about Zynga- the best online social games developing company. Zynga was founded in the year 2007 by Mark Pincus, Eric Schiermeyer, Michael Luxton, Justin Waldron, Andrew Trader and Steve Schoettler. The company has its headquarters in San Francisco, United states with more than 3000 employees and 215 million active users with hundreds of new users being added to the list daily. The company has been continuously developing since then and has its offices in a number of countries across the globe.

The company is known to develop stand alone as well as application widgets for websites like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace and Google+. The company has signed a five year agreement in the year 2010 that states that, all covered Zynga games that use Facebook integration must remain exclusive to Facebook for the duration of the agreement, and Zynga is not allowed to release new games on an undisclosed list of other social networks.

Out of the numerous games developed by the company, CityVille, CastleVille, FarmVille, and Empires & Allies are the five most widely played games on Facebook. Farmville and Cityville have more than 60 million users and generate half of the company’s revenue. The popularity of these games can be accessed by the fact that people spend hours playing these games without getting bored. Apart from social games, Zynga also develops games for mobiles and other platforms like iPhone, iPad and android. Some of the popular Zynga games for android include Zynga poker, Dream Zoo, Hanging with friends etc. These games are equally entertaining like the social networking ones.