Zynga was not only the cover story in BusinessWeek, they’ve made it into Fortune. For an explanation of Zynga, see my previous post.
What is a social game? Fortune explains it as a free online application accessed through Facebook, MySpace and similar sites. They’re free! But Zynga has cleverly thought of a way to get you to pay for them.
They will sell you components – which you have to pay for in real money – to keep playing the free game. The game never ends and you can play it in a short stretch of time. Brilliant! And it’s not just young techies who do this. Fortune profiled a 37-year-old mother of three who is a devotee of Farmville. She spent $100 in the last few months on it. Someone restrain me from starting...
Here’s my question – why don’t other free sites follow the model and start charging for something?
Fortune points out that Twitter and Facebook either don’t have sales or are barely breaking even. For all that traffic, and the smart people at the helm, I’m sure they can do better than that.
Now that I’ve written about Google being the possible next victim of antitrust investigation, maybe we need to be on the looking for Zynga (just kidding – it will be a while!).
Interesting sidebar for the dog lovers out there: Mark Pincus, the company’s founder, named the company after his deceased, but beloved American Bulldog, Zinga.
My hat’s off to you Zynga, I wish I’d thought of it!
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