The exclusive partnership between Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), the largest social network in the world with over a billion users, and Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA), a widely-renowned social gaming company, is coming to an end.
Now that the partnership is due to expire at the start of 2013, Zynga’s SVP of mobile, Travis Boatman, explains why Zynga is moving away from the social network. Tech Crunch revealed the interview between Boatman and Inside Social Games’ AJ Glasser at the Mobile-Loco conference in San Francisco, where Boatman said: “There’s a lot of people who play games and want to connect socially, who don’t want to use Facebook.”
But despite the expiry of their exclusive relationship, Boatman says they remain on good terms: “We’re super fans of Facebook. They were a great partner of ours in founding and growing the company.”
Boatman suggested that Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) will be opening up its doors to social gamers who don’t want the strings that come with being part of a social network: “The relationship with us and Facebook is great, but it provides users a lot more value to be able to connect to people who they aren’t friends with on Facebook.”
In the future, Zynga may push Zynga.com as a portal for a social gaming for the company. An alternative would be using Twitter as the platform. Although not as big as Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), the site could prove invaluable for Zynga as the social gaming moves to offer its products to a less restricted audience.
Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) is well known for its social games, such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Zynga Poker – the ones that regularly clog up most people’s Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) news feeds. Facebook has for some time acted as the platform for Zynga’s games; bringing them to an audience of millions.
The Facebook platform gave Zynga a springboard to become a household name amongst many users of the social network. Both companies have had mixed results since their IPO’s. Facebook’s IPO put shares at $38. After some considerable volatility, they have recently pushed back up to just shy of $28 – the best they have been since late July.
Zynga’s stock was initially offered at $10 per share, but has since tanked to a shadow of that at only $2.50. However, its stock recently saw a boost as the company took steps into real money online gaming. Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) reportedly receives 80 percent of its revenue from Facebook, so the expiry of the deal means the company will have to diversify in order to make up the revenues elsewhere.
