Zynga Inc unveiled a social network for gamers dubbed "Zynga with Friends" on Tuesday, hoping to wean itself from a longstanding, symbiotic relationship with Facebook Inc, while becoming a major Internet destination.
The company founded by Mark Pincus will also provide programming tools to help third-party developers devise online and mobile games based on its own software, expanding its slate further beyond mainstays such as "Farmville" and "Mafia Wars."
Zynga wants its 290 million monthly users to start connecting with a "different type of friend." In other words, people they aren't already connected with on Facebook.
At its annual product event in San Francisco yesterday, the company previewed a feature called Zynga With Friends, to be rolled out over the coming months. It will unify Zynga games across all devices and platforms, including Apple iOS, Android, Zynga.com, and Facebook, and will incorporate features—such as a "social lobby," chats, and suggestions for new friends—that encourage users to build a network going beyond their real-life Facebook connections.
At its annual product event in San Francisco yesterday, the company previewed a feature called Zynga With Friends, to be rolled out over the coming months. It will unify Zynga games across all devices and platforms, including Apple iOS, Android, Zynga.com, and Facebook, and will incorporate features—such as a "social lobby," chats, and suggestions for new friends—that encourage users to build a network going beyond their real-life Facebook connections.
Zynga has unveiled features that include a network designed to provide the more than 290 million players of its games with the same tools, whether they are competing on Facebook's online social network, a mobile device or the company's own website.
The network is called "Zynga With Friends." That's a reference to one of Zynga's most popular games, the Scrabble-inspired "Words With Friends."
Toward that end, Zynga began in March hosting some of its games on its own website. The Zynga With Friends network is meant to ensure some of the features on Zynga.com also are available to players when they are on Facebook or mobile devices.
The network is also being opened to other game makers in an attempt to encourage players to come to Zynga.com more frequently. That could create more opportunities for Zynga to sell advertising to supplement the sales of virtual goods that make its games more engaging. Those items bring in most of Zynga's revenue. Just 3.5 million, or about 1 percent, of Zynga's users buy virtual goods, underscoring the challenges facing the company as it tries to convert more of its audience into paying customers.
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