The Zynga talent acquisition machine rolls on today, as the social gaming giant buys yet another gaming team. Today, Zynga is announcing the acquisition of the team from MarketZero, who is behind the largest online portal tracking career statistics of online poker players, PokerTableRatings. It’s important to note that Zynga is hiring the team behind MarketZero, but will not operating or acquiring MarketZero’s existing business.
MarketZero’s founders include Gustavo Abdala, Amir Elaguizy, Nir Leibovich, Timothy Sullivan and Jason Wang. We hear the team will work for Zynga Poker and will help develop new and innovative features within the game.
It should be interesting to see if the new team will add some of the interactive features that were developed through MarketZero’s platform. For example, PokerTableRatings’ tools help poker players maximize their online profits through a real time Table Selector, Player Research Tool, a Buddy List with Email Alerts, and other reports. We’re told that PokerTableRatings.com will continue to be owned and operated by a separate entity and all of the user accounts on PokerTableRatings.com will be unaffected by the acquisition.
Flush with cash, Zynga has been averaging about one acquisition per month over the past eleven months. Past acquisitions include mobile game development studio Floodgate, social browser Flock, New York’s Area/Code, Texas-based NewToy, XPD in Beijing, Unoh Games in Tokyo, Conduit Labs in Boston, Dextrose AG in Frankfurt, Germany,Challenge Games in Austin, and Bonfire Studios in Texas.
And yesterday, Zynga added Dreamworks Animation Chief Jeffrey Katzenberg to its board.
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...
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