Zynga - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Zynga to let users play games without Facebook

  Zynga's network of users has historically been tightly linked to Facebook's social graph, but now the gaming giant is looking to branch out.

• Cloud security forecast: Murky with an 80% chance of finger pointing

  Despite the best efforts of cloud service providers and industry groups like the Cloud Security Alliance, cloud security remains a troublesome issue for IT execs.

• Some Facebook users asked for $100 to message Zuckerberg

  Want to send a message directly to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg? It might cost you $100, if you don't want it to wind up in his spam folder.

• 'Worst CEO' list calls out Zynga's Pincus, Zuckerberg's 'hoodie mentality'

  Zynga's Mark Pincus made the annual "Worst CEOs" list compiled by Dartmouth College professor Sydney Finkelstein, which also nearly included Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Andrew Mason of Groupon.

• Facebook loosens ties with Zynga

  Facebook and Zynga have loosened their ties in an amended agreement that does away with most of Facebook's exclusive rights to Zynga games, but also permits Facebook to develop its own games from March next year.

• Google services went down for 30 minutes in Asia this morning, CDN says

  All of Google's service offerings went offline in some parts of the world during an unusual half-hour outage that mainly affected users in Asia, according to content delivery network provider CloudFlare.

• Zynga lays off workers, closes Boston studio

  Zynga is cutting about 5 percent of its workforce, and is "sunsetting" 13 of its older games, the company's founder and CEO Mark Pincus said Tuesday in a note to employees.

• Wall Street Beat: IPOs, M&A, chip news stir tech optimism

  Zynga's initial public offering Friday, a raft of acquisition announcements this week from IBM, Salesforce and others, and some upbeat reports on the chip and hardware sector are putting a positive spin on year-end news for the tech sector.

• Android users embrace Facebook, Google apps

  Google must be pleased to know that Android users aged 18-44 tend to keep their apps all in the family – the Google family, that is.

• Web 2.0 Summit to focus on value, pitfalls of online data

  This year's Web 2.0 Summit will focus on the critical role that online data plays in the Internet economy and on how its use and misuse can make the difference between success and failure in markets like online gaming, Web advertising, search, social media and mobile.

• SLIDESHOW: Inside Zynga's crazy new headquarters

  Zynga invited the media to its new headquarters in San Francisco this week to show off its latest games. It's at the corner of 8th and Townsend in a former warehouse district that's now also home to bars, nightclubs and plenty of startups. Zynga has made the interior look more like an art space than a company headquarters.

• Zynga gets more social, more violent

  Zynga is making its games more social, but also more edgy, so players will be able to meet people more easily, then hack them to death with a chainsaw.

• Zynga reportedly buys Astro Ape

  Zynga has acquired mobile games start-up Astro Ape, according to Business Insider, which notes that Astro Ape employees are changing their place of employment on LinkedIn.

• Zynga sued for alleged patent infringement

  Zynga has been sued in a federal district court in Delaware for allegedly infringing on two patents obtained in the 1990's by Agincourt Gaming.

• Zynga partners with Tencent to launch game in China

  U.S. social game developer Zynga has partnered with one of China's largest Internet companies, Tencent, to bring its popular CityVille game to the country.