More on Zynga.com

Extracted 01MAR2012 from http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/01/zynga-launches-zynga-com-as-it-expands-beyo...

Zynga chief operating officer John Schappert said in an interview with VentureBeat that Zynga will continue to use Facebook Credits as the underlying virtual goods payment system for Zynga.com’s users. Facebook takes a 30 percent tax on every Facebook Credit transaction, and most analysts believed Zynga would move off of Facebook to escape that fee. But by using Facebook Credits as well as Facebook Connect, Zynga is showing its alliance with the social network is still pretty tight. Of course, if relations with Facebook ever get frosty, Zynga could turn on other forms of virtual goods payment...

With the Zynga Platform, Zynga is behaving just a game console owner does. It publishes its own games as a “first party” on the platform. But it also recruits promising companies to create their own games to run on the platform as third parties...

The platform could be very attractive to third-party game developers who also need analytics to drive their understanding of users. Zynga has long used this as a competitive advantage, revising its games on-the-fly to be as user-friendly as possible. Zynga measures social engagement in its games through a metric that looks at a player’s “active social network.” The number of active neighbors that a player engages with in a game directly impacts how meaningful an experience they have. Those with good numbers are likely to continue playing...

Many of Zynga’s games require a player to get 10 friends to help with a task before the player can progress. With Facebook, the player has a risk of alienating friends if they spam them with such game help requests. But on Zynga.com, all of the members will be game fans and player profiles will enable them to easily find like-minded gamers.