Zynga becomes No. 1 in number of online gamers

July 31, 2009 | Dean Takahashi | Comments |
|

zyngaIn casual games, Yahoo Games has been the biggest online operator in the U.S. for years. But now it’s been surpassed by Zynga, the social gaming company that has a huge audience on Facebook and the iPhone.

Zynga now has 44 million monthly unique users for its games such as Texas HoldEm Poker, which people play with their friends on Facebook, according to internal Zynga numbers. By comparison, Yahoo Games has 19.3 million monthly users, according to market researcher comScore. In terms of monthly active users, Zynga’s number hits 66 million, according to Zynga’s numbers.

This explains why many game companies are envious of Zynga. Console game sales have been falling for four months. Casual game web site operators are in the midst of a price war. But Zynga can get access to Facebook’s 250 million users. And it monetizes through a variety of means, including virtual goods, where players buy a digital good with real money.

Beyond the poker game, Zynga has a bunch of hot titles. FarmVille, launched two months ago as a clone of the successful Farm Town game, has more than 5 million users, making it the fastest-growing game the company has ever had. Mafia Wars and YoVille are also hot Zynga properties.

Three weeks ago the company had 16 million daily active users. Now it has 19 million. To date, Zynga’s games have been installed 120 million times. Users spend 14 minutes per session and, given multiple sessions per day, spend about 64 minutes a day with Zynga’s games. The total number of user hours per month is 484 million.

Zynga’s critics say it also spends a lot on advertising in order to snag more users. That may be true, but the company is apparently making money. Mark Pincus, chief executive, confirmed to us for the first time that estimates that Zynga will generate more than $100 million in revenues per year this year are “conservative.”

This rapid growth in its audience explains Zynga’s rapid hiring. The company has 330 full-time employees and about 60 contractors. It has 110 open jobs.

Next Story:
Previous Story:

Email
Print
Bookmark
Google
Delicious
Facebook
Twitter
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Digg
Live
More…

Photo of Dean Takahashi

About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • deb
    You failed to mention the hackers stealing from everyone (read their forums), or the money lost when Zygna fails to pay the coins purchased, and leaves customers high and dry with no help! They owe me $52 dollars!
  • Island_Guy2
    Zynga is running one of the crookedest game sites on the net . Do not and i repeat do not venture near their Street Racing game . On a regular basis they roll the game back which in turn causes players to lose stats and items which some have bought with real money . When this happens customer support doesn't exist and does not deal with the issues . If you were to stop in and read the posts in the Street racing forum you would know that their claim of being one of the #1gameing site is bogus and just fancy PR work . They have been reported to Facebook on numerous occasions and have had numerous complaints logged again them . So any of their claims are just plain Bull . Not to mention their coders for the games couldn't code a remote for a TV let alone a game . the games have more bugs then a cat has hair and they just keep adding new ones with every update .
  • Amazing what Zynga has accomplished. From discussions with the investor panel in Seattle Casual Connect I think everyone agreed that guys like Zynga, Playdom and Playfish have a huge first movers advantage. Even though their games are simple they've got the marketing muscle now and the user base to deflect most competition. There is likely still room for a handful of other major players but I think for the next 3-5 years you'll be hearing a lot more from Zynga.

    At GameStreamer we're working hard to figure out how we can fit social gaming into the overall pc gaming experience.
  • nicola
    Dean - I think one data point that gets overlooked is how many "real uniques" does Zynga have. They are adding uniques in each game and spitting it out to you. Remember, there are duplicate uniques across their games. So, please dont just take the numbers from Zynga's PR at face value and report it here.

    The same is valid for their daily active users. They total the numbers across FB & MySpace and report them. Yahoo's monthly numbers are ACTUAL uniques.
  • Wow -- Pincus is so enamored of his startup he changed his last name to match?
  • Tom Walter
    Social gaming companies focusing their PR effort on creating the sense that “game usage” equals “user ownership” and this is obviously not the case. Since this is a relatively new territory, a lot of people don’t really look into the differences, however there is a major difference between the two on so many levels. The 60MM users Zynga touches are Facebook’s and Myspace’s users they are not Zynga’s. The fact’s they are playing Zynga’s games is very impressive from a game publishing point of view (and they did manage to bring about 10MM users to their own site) but Zynga doesn’t own these users, nor the overall experience on the platform. DO you really believe that if gaming prove to be the way to make money on social networks they will continue to provide free access to users, and not try to "own" some of the platform, the conetent or both themselves?
  • Spike
    You never want to compare unique visitor number from 2 different sources, especially when one is internal metrics. Internal unique visitor counts are always much higher (30-40%) than comScore or Nielsen due to differences in methodology. I see this fact every month tracking traffic for one of the top US online gaming websites. comScore does not track Zynga, however according to Nielsen, Yahoo! Games has 40% more unique visitors than Zynga.

    Anyway, advertisers only care about unique visitor counts from Nielsen, although companies love to report internal metrics because they are much higher.
  • MassMan
    When you run an illegal online poker room catering to teenagers, anything is possible.
  • aaronhills
    nj
  • aaronhills
    hi
  • Tom Walter
    I thought that this article from the Economist, explains better the huge business risk that Zynga faces to its entire model, note in the last paragraph - a summary of my point:

    http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displa...

    "Some analysts have warned that if social networks do not get smarter at generating revenue themselves, they risk seeing the best money-spinning opportunities siphoned off by those venture-backed start-ups. By some estimates, developers working on Facebook applications may pull in as much revenue this year as the site itself. In a report published in May, ContentNext Media, a research firm, concluded that Facebook should think of itself as a shopping mall and start charging developers “rent” to be on its platform. Twitter might ultimately want to follow suit. Such a move could bring in plenty of cash, even if it does appear a bit, er, anti-social."

    "if the direction social networks are heading is this "rent" the social networks site are going to charge app developers, you are back to exact same "portal world/traffic acquisition" we're at today, and the "free lunch" is over for the Zyngas of the world. It will 100% happen if you ask me, the economic pressure on Facebook and Myspace will drive this no doubt.

    Facebook decision about timing of pulling this is balanced between the growth of users they can still achieve by letting the app dev driving their growth and the pressure from its investors to start making money.

    This might be the reason btw, for this PR blitz you're seeing lately from Zynga....time is not working in their favor, the asset they built [very impressive in short time] is sitting on a very unstable economic principles, and therefore Pincus may be trying to rush and find a buyer that doesn't really see the risk or sell before the risk materialize.
  • Tom Walter
    here is the full link to the artical in the Economist:

    http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displa...
  • Zynga's Poker is really going great these days. Almost 2 lac users play poker everyday. I have personally seen it. Poker is really an amzing game and popular game by Zynga.
  • In general, internal site numbers double-count (or do not exclude multiple devices of) users. 2.5 is the average number of devices an individual active web user is exposed to: office, home, iPhone, etc.

    Therefore, dividing the raw internal site number by 2 or 2.5 will result in an accurate unique user number, similar to the number reported by a reliable, well-known research company using ISP or panel measurement methods.
  • jonbreen
    Is zynga on the iphone real money gambling does any1 know???
  • jackson
    Take care! Zynga is a swindler. I spent 3 months' time and won up to 600 million chips. Zynga just made up whatever reason to ban my account and confiscated all my chips. The total value taken from me is US$18,000. dollars. Friends! wake up! Do not be deceived!

    小心！Zynga是騙子。我花了3個月時間在Zynga Poker內贏取600million chips. 他們随便作一個理由，把所有chips 沒收。按Zynga 的買價，每5 million chip = US$150計。总值是US$18,000元。朋友們！清醒罷，不要再受騙了！
  • artistdalzenia4peace
    HELLO ,I AM A 1ST TIME gamer in love with enjoying Yoville and Farmville. AHHH,do I believe they will try to cross over??? You bet your sweet bippy I do, I would be willing to put money on it unless they have some special kinda contract (zynga/FB) but I am sure they(Zynga)
    have a break -off projectory in mind...its a corporation ..isnt it? ya, ya ya .........
    I see some things happening that are "funky", which made we wanna seek out more info..so i ended up here....thank you .
  • Deborah
    Being one of the gamers on Facebook it would be nice if Zynga actually lived up to it's reputation that they pat them selves on the back for and actually would respond to people in a short amount of time when they have been contacted with a complaint of a certain app and not months down the road like they do. Oh sure you get a email right away but its a bot type email with a refrence number but noting gets done for months. Maybe with all that money they are making they could maybe hire more workers. I do know that many , many people on facebook and Myspace are getting more than a little upset with Zynga because they have gone from a free game app to becoming greedy as the days go by. All the little things they have been adding lately to games like to Farmville or Yoville that are cute things are all to buy now and not free. They get you into the game then your enjoying it but now they want you to buy, buy, buy...its called greed because just from advertisments they generate money but thats not enough. All I have to say is if Zynga wants to continue having happy gamers then they better return the favor and reply to gamers in a resonable amount of time or they will leave them like dust in the wind. So many this past month have left Yoville because they did some changes and the players were absolutly not happier and even when the new add was being teated the Yovillians were not making any Yoville money to spend in YoLand but they stiill forced it and now so many have left. They are not making wise dicessions lately and they may pay a big price. In Tx Hold Em so many players are having chips..I mean in the millions missing but yet Zynga doesnt do anything about it. I know I have about had it with them.
  • mad_ as_ hell
    Hello Zynga fans. I am an avid yoville player and plenty of players use their personal debit and credit cards to make purchases on the game.Several of my friends made purchase with their real american dollars and continued to play the game. A few days after the purchases, amazingly the items that they purchased disappeared from their game. They all wrote zynga customer support and "customer support" said " that there was a computer glitch or a hacker possibly had taken their items and that Zynga would not refund the money spent on the items or replace the items. That I do believe , is against the law. If you purchase something online that is broken when you have it mailed to you, say for example a glass vase that was shipped to you. you either get your money refunded or the item gets replaced. This should apply to Zynga also.Look last month there were 600, 000+ subscribers to the Yoville application. I looked a couple days ago and it is well into 1, 753, 0000 subscribers currently, world-wide. Don't you think that this is a supply and demand situation. They don't care, they have created a mad rush to play Yoville and will take what money they can and run with it.
    This is not right.Any suggestions on how to help these people anyone? Please post a response immediatley!
  • good article...thanks a lot for the information!
  • good article...thanks a lot for the information!
  • good article...thanks a lot for the information!
  • good article...thanks a lot for the information!
blog comments powered by Disqus