Here are some takeaways from Zynga’s Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) “Unleashed” event being held at its San Francisco headquarters.
The company announced its new “Zynga API” – so that people can enjoy and create beautiful games. The company claims backend services do not require backend servers, hence it is opening up the service to the world through release of the API.
Zynga also offered some insights into how it runs its platform. Apparently, every second, a combined 1 million actions take place on the platform. But wait, there’s more – on top of and in the middle of all this activity Zynga’s obsession with quality drives it to release upwards of 1,000 new features a week. This is creditable given the sheer number of players logged into its site at any one time. On a single day the company may also end up installing over a 100 updates on its games! Here’s a secret – Zynga is able to save precious programming time because it develops its games at one shot rather than piecemeal for the clients and service separately.
The company also let drop that it has developed a robust and innovative data analytics solution that is capable of instantly judging the popularity of a new game or feature.
The event turned somewhat nostalgic with its fifth birthday round the corner. Thrown in with history were some interesting stats:
· 6 billion neighbor connections
· 2.8 billion social interactions a day
· 1.8 trillion game minutes played over three years
Zynga’s first historical milestone was March 7, 2008, when it sold its first virtual goods – a poker chip! This was followed by the launch of Zynga Live Poker for iPhone in November 2008, and June 2009 saw the launch of the blockbuster Farmville game.
What’s in the future? CEO Mark Pincus shared his visions as follows:
· Mobile gaming a mass market after 2012
· Zynga tending to make games free to enable the world to connect through games
· ‘Play’ will soon join Search, shop and share as the most important online activities for people
