Zynga launches own website for social games

Let's conjecture what effects this will have on current Zynga games on Facebook, including Empires & Allies.

My commentary to come.


ZNGA stock performance for March 1, 2012 from Yahoo:

14.48  1.31(9.95%) 4:00PM EST|After Hours: 15.22  0.74 (5.11%) 7:09PM EST - Nasdaq Real 


Article:
Investors Push Zynga Stock Higher After Company Launches Web Site - Seeking Alpha, March 1, 2012

Zynga's Marketing Tactics

If you've recently started playing World Domination in Empires & Allies, you most likely find it a very exciting, new feature.  At some point when you re-enter the game, you probably got the offer above for 60% off Empire Points.

This is part of Zynga's marketing tactics.  First, introduce a new and exciting feature (World Domination).  Let players play around for a bit.  Have lots of new units that can be unlocked for free but only with a lot of work.  

When the player comes back into the game within the next day, they see the limited-time (2 hours) offer for 60% off Empire Points.  What better way to coax someone into buying virtual goods than to get them excited by a new mega-feature?  Excited people tend to be more impulsive.  Zynga feeds on this impulsivity--not giving it a chance to die down--and encourages a rush decision by limiting the offer to only two hours.

Even better, the buying process goes very smoothly and quickly if you already have your payment information stored on Facebook.  Wasn't it convenient then that within the last couple of weeks there was this amazing offer?

If you had not purchased any Facebook credits prior to this offer, you might have been very tempted at an offer of 80% off at a price point of only $1.  It was also a good way for Facebook to get your payment information so that you could experience a smoother transaction in the future.  Wasn't that nice of them?

Here's a more recent offer that shows up as a banner below Zynga's games:

At the same time, low-price offers like these are probably designed to increase Monthly Unique Payers (MUP).  MUP is a metric that Zynga uses in its press releases to portray growth.  See the following article from Seeking Alpha:

Has Zynga Stopped Growing?

Recall the recent news of a former Zynga employee bashing Zynga, calling it a marketing company rather than a game company:

http://empiresandalliesgame.blogspot.com/2012/02/former-zynga-employee-bashes-zynga.html

More on Zynga's marketing tactics later...

UPDATE Feb. 24, 2012:

A few low-level, infrequent players have reported receiving this 90% off offer recently:

ZNGA stock

Empires & Allies is a Facebook game created by Zynga.  The game was released on June 1, 2001.  Yesterday (Feb. 1, 2012) marked its 8-month anniversary.

It's interesting to compare the popularity of Zynga's games with the stock performance of Zynga itself.  The company is listed on Nasdaq as ZNGA.  The stock IPO'd on December 16, 2011 at a price of $10.00, but closed that day at $9.50.  ZNGA's performance has been mostly lackluster since then.

However, ZNGA was up as high as ~20% today (so far at ~11:30am EST) from yesterday, giving it a market capitalization of over $8 billion.  Financial news attribute this surge to a "halo effect" due to the $5 billion IPO filing by Facebook yesterday.  Facebook is expected to IPO later in 2012; the expected stock symbol is FB.

Here is ZNGA's stock chart since its IPO:

Here is ZNGA's stock chart for the last 5 trading days:

See the following links to follow ZNGA's stock performance:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=znga
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=znga&ql=1