history of zynga

ZYNGA.COM

HISTORY OF

ZYNGA

Mark Pincus founded Zynga in April 2007 under the name Presidio Media; the company name changed to Zynga in July 2007. The early supporting founding team included Eric Schiermeyer, Michael Luxton, Justin Waldron, Kyle Stewart, Scott Dale, Steve Schoettler, Kevin Hagan, and Andrew Trader.

They received US$29 million in venture finance from several firms, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in July 2008, at which time they appointed former Electronic Arts Chief Creative Officer Bing Gordon to the board.

At that time, they also bought YoVille, a large virtual world social network game. According to the company's website, as of December 2009, it had 60 million unique daily active users.

ZYNGA was named after an American bulldog named Zynga once owned by Mark Pincus.They use an image of a bulldog as their logo.

As of September 2010, Zynga had over 1,200 employee.

On Feb. 17, 2010, Zynga open Zynga india in Bangalore, The company’s first office outside the United States.

March 18, 2010 – Zynga confirmed that it will open a second international office in Ireland.

May 7, 2010 – Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported that Zynga Was threatening to leave Facebook Altogether in the wake of Facebook’s requiring exclusive use of Facebook credits for Monetization in application.

After Facebook negotiations for having Zynga host its games solely on Facebook fell through, Facebook retaliated by shutting off notifications for several Zynga games, including FarmVille.

Plans surfaced for Zynga to distance itself from Facebook by creating a new "Zynga Live" network, to be called ZLive. On May 18, 2010, Facebook and Zynga entered into a five-year relationship to expand the use of Facebook Credits in Zynga's games.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, was quoted as saying, "We are pleased to enter into a new agreement with Zynga to enhance the experience for Facebook users who play Zynga games."

The companies stated they were testing the use of Facebook Credits, which would allow Facebook to effectively capture 30% of any user's spending in the game, and their use would be gradually rolled out to all games.

In a May 24, 2011 discussion at TechCrunch Disrupt, Arrington and Bing Gordon described the incident as the "Cuban Missile Crisis of tech".

June 3, 2010 – Zynga acquired challenge games.

October 5, 2010 – Bonfire studios was acquired by Zynga. It was renamed “Zynga Dallas”. The Acquisition brought Zynga’s workforce to more than 1,300 employees worldwide.

On December 2, 2010, Zynga announced that it acquired the Texas-based mobile game developer Newtoy, Inc., developers of the game "Words with Friends",and renamed the studio to Zynga With Friends.

In December 2010, Zynga's game CityVille surpassed FarmVille as its most popular game with over 61 million monthly active users and a base of over 16 million daily active users.

Zynga has acquired the New York-based game developer Area/Code, now renamed Zynga New York.

In March 2011, Zynga announced the acquisition of the team from Massachusetts game developer Floodgate Entertainment. It was Zynga's tenth acquisition in ten months.  

In April 2011, Zynga announced the acquisition of MarketZero, an online poker tracker company

In April 2011, the company partnered with Lady Gaga in a new game offering. In May 2011, the company was reported to be in the process of raising an additional $500 million with a valuation at $10 billion

In May 2011, the company launched its most complicated game to date—Empires and Allies.  

As of July 1, 2011, the company had 2,000 employees. In September 2011, Zynga announced that their biggest game CityVille has made the transition to google+ after about 95% decline in their profits.