Recent venture capital fund raising rounds have placed very high valuations on social media sites such as Facebook, Zynga and Groupon. The valuations continue to soar at an exponential pace, some placing Facebook at 75 billion and Zynga at 10 billion. Many experts have gone on record claiming this is a bubble including Eric Schmidt, Alisher Usmanov, the Russian magnate behind much of the venture capital in soical media and the Economist from last year. [more inside]
posted by FuturisticDragon on May 8, 2011 - 96 comments

PC Gamer: Do you still think social games are “evil” then?
Jonathan Blow: Yes. Absolutely. [T]he general definition of evil in the real world, where there isn’t like the villain in the mountain fortress, is selfishness to the detriment of others or to the detriment of the world. And that’s exactly what [most of these games are].
posted by Rory Marinich on Feb 15, 2011 - 133 comments

The Wall Street Journal's What They Know blog is charged with determining what information marketers are capable of learning about internet users through tracking technology. This weekend, they took aim at Facebook, after their investigation discovered that many popular apps on the social-networking site, including those by Zynga, have been transmitting identifying information in the form of User ID's to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, even if a user has enabled strict privacy settings. Additional analysis. Response post on Facebook's Developer Blog. Forbes' blogger Kashmir Hill asks if the WSJ is overreacting, and Techcrunch notes that the severity and risks of UID transferral are still being debated.
posted by zarq on Oct 18, 2010 - 56 comments

FarmVillains: Steal someone else's game. Change its name. Make millions. Repeat.
posted by brundlefly on Sep 10, 2010 - 51 comments

"I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away." So said Mark Pincus, CEO and founder of Zynga, the company behind social games like Mafia Wars and Farmville. It's the latest revelation in a week-long bit of drama between TechCrunch and the companies running the shady virtual currency that makes the games profitable. [more inside]
posted by jbickers on Nov 6, 2009 - 43 comments