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Zynga

Social Game Developer

Published 01/18/2009 and rated

3 out of 5 stars by AppAppeal Editor

3 comments for this app

What can you use the app for?

Zynga.com is the social gaming company best known for its Facebook game versions such as: CityVille, FarmVille or Mafia Wars. The site features versions of classic games such as Attack! (A Risk clone), Texas Hold’em Poker and Battleship. Zynga develops some of these games, while others are developed by third parties via the Zynga network. It has gaming applications for the following social networks: Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Tagged, MyYahoo and the Iphone.

What is the history and popularity of the app?

Zynga.com was launched in January 2008 and has seen phenomenal growth. The site has over 50 million registered users and tens of millions of daily visitors. It is closely tied to Facebook as its number one game provider. Zynga was founded by Mark Pincus, the creator of Tribe.net (one of the first social networking sites on the web) and Support.com (later SupportSoft). Michael Luxton is CTO and also a member of the founding team. Mark Vranesh, a SupportSoft co-founder is CFO, and Scott Dale, co-founder of Houseglue is VP of Engineering. The company is located in San Francisco. Zynga launched a network for third-party developers in February 2008, and received $29 million in funding from venture capitalists in July 2008. In June 2011, Zynga initiated a lawsuit against Votsu, accusing them of stealing game ideas. Beginning of July same year, Zynga announced its IPO aiming to raise $1 billion.

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What are the differences to other apps?

Zynga’s competition includes Mytopia.com, Playfish.com and Social Gaming Network (Socialgn.com). None of these sites features as many games as Zynga, but Mytopia has support for several different mobile smartphone platforms besides the Iphone, as well as social networking support. Playfish.com is primarily built around Facebook applications. Social Gaming Network has support for Faceboook, MySpace, HI5, and Iphone.

How does the web app look and feel to use?

Zynga’s home page is a bit busy, but navigation is obvious and most sub-sections are relatively uncluttered. All of the games are listed on the left-hand side of the home page. In order to see which networks each game supports, the user must click on the Games tab. This brings up a page with the games organized by social networking site. The site is quick and responsive, and there is virtually no learning curve involved in using the site.

How does the registration process work?

Simply click on a game, then choose the social network you wish to play on. This takes you to a login page on that site that asks if you wish to install the application. The installation takes only seconds and you are ready to play. The game application will show you which of your friends are currently online, and allow you to join a game or start your own. You can also join general games that include everyone who is playing, not just your friends. The site also features a blog with the latest news and information about new games as well as general news about the site.

What does it cost to use the application?

Membership is not necessary at Zynga and no registration is required. You must be a member of the social network that you wish to play the game on, however. There are no fees involved, as revenue comes from third-party advertising on the application pages at the social networking site. The ads are shown separately from the game window and are relatively unobtrusive.

Who would you recommend the application to?

Zynga is recommended for anyone who has an interest in playing games with their friends who belong to the same social network. It has the largest selection of networks of any of the social gaming sites, and also has an excellent selection of games. For users wish to do their social gaming on a mobile smartphone other than the Iphone, Mytopia is a better choice.

Zynga Features

Support for the most social networking sites
Large selection of games
Service is entirely free and requires no registration
Site is well organized and easy to navigate
Limited smartphone support (Iphone only)

Zynga video

3 comments for this app

3 comments, showing 1 - 3 (newest first)

Stormdancer
on 09 Jun 2011 at 18:02

Thanks for getting me enticed and happily playing the games . I'm at full swing but I don't think zynga is. I don't feel like sending gifts all the time. I would actually like to play the damn game. I believe there was a tip that said: Play for 10 minutes then come back 2 hours later. You probably meant :" want to play for 10 minutes? wait ten hours. Thanks for spoiling my game.

Vivek Srivastava
on 09 May 2010 at 08:52

GameLane is a service created by the FriendLane.com .The purpose of the gaming zone is to provide a addiction environment for the computer gamers and video game players.It's a little different thing to play online the flash games and to play video games because of the multiple players and distinguishing environment of the competition.The Gamelane like some other services of FriendLane.com is still in beta phase.We at FriendLane.com are also in the development of flash games and multiplayer addictive games.The players have to login before they can play a certain number of times a particular game.The games running on Gamelane ,are flash games requiring very less bandwidth and are on high resolution. There are also some games which you may find interesting which are based on the single player methodology of gaming .Some games provide you the score tracking mechanism ,which may instantly tell you the top players.You may wish to tell a friend about the service ,if you do enjoy using it.There are many links on the GameLane which you may find interesting to use.These are the links to games running on other websites,it may be noteworthy that FriendLane.com is not related or collaborated to these third party wesites. There may be several games running on this website, Neither we are involved in the development of these games nor we are having any business relationship with these third party companies.

Anonymous
on 28 Jan 2010 at 01:34

Farmville and Special Forces Lag. Junk,Junk,Junk. Special Forces, they never completed the game, The game locks up, You can tell somebody that didnt know nothing about real gaming made the game. You click a link in Special forces and the web pages comes up with errors and page turns white. He should go back to Berger king Flipping hambergers,

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