Posted on Thursday, October 28 2010 @ 14:03 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Developing games for social networks like Facebook is big business. Zynga's FarmVille is one of the most popular games in the world, the company has more than 210 million active users, and
Bloomberg reports that the social game maker now has a higher valuation than Electronic Arts:
Zynga, the maker of such games as “FarmVille” and “FrontierVille,” is valued at $5.51 billion, according to SharesPost Inc., an exchange for shares of privately held companies. Electronic Arts, the second-largest game publisher by sales, is worth $5.22 billion on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Started by Mark Pincus almost four years ago, Zynga has become one of the fastest-growing technology companies by using Facebook Inc.’s social network to distribute games. It makes money by selling virtual goods, such as vehicles and weapons that help players advance in games. The company has grabbed about a third of that market, which is worth $1.6 billion this year, according to Inside Network in Palo Alto, California.
