Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus took the stage for about 10 minutes to talk about his fast-rising company. First he quickly rattled off some stats:
Pincus also noted that one game, Frontierville, has 650,000 same-sex marriages. “That’s amazing, that’s probably more than any country in the whole world,” he quipped.
Pincus said that his company’s main goal is to convince you that it’s worth it to take a 10 minute break. We don’t have time for full TV shows anymore, but we have time for short, fun games, is his belief.
So what’s next for the company? Pincus talked about something called “Dog Activated” — a more social experience across the entire Zynga network. The core idea is that if you see the Zynga dog (their logo), you know someone is playing a Zynga game.
“We have more than 3 million peak concurrent users,” Pincus said. He also said that at any given point, 4 people you know are playing a Zynga game. Yes, they’re everywhere. Zynga wants to make it easier for all those people to connect both in games and out of games. Expect to hear a lot more about this in the coming months.
Pincus also talked a little bit more about his “dial tone” idea. Facebook is the social dial tone, for example. They’re the underlying current for everything social on the web. Pincus wants Zynga to be the social gaming dial tone.
Zynga was founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus and is named for his late American Bulldog, Zinga. Loyal and spirited, Zinga’s name is a nod to a legendary African warrior queen. The early supporting founding team included Eric Schiermeyer, Michael Luxton, Justin Waldron, Kyle Stewart, Scott Dale, John Doerr, Steve Schoettler, Kevin Hagan, and Andrew Trader. Zynga’s mission is connecting the world through games. Everyday millions of people interact with their friends and express their unique personalities through our...
Weighing in at 150 lbs, is Mark Pincus, frenetic visionary of Zynga. His DNA is one strand entrepreneur and one strand competitive gamer. Mark founded Tribe.net, one of the first social networks in 2003. Prior to Tribe, he was the founder and CEO of SupportSoft. Prior to SupportSoft, Mark co-founded Freeloader, the first consumer push information service.
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