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Zynga's stock offering.
If you have a Facebook account, odds are high that someone you know plays social games like Farmville. Although Zynga's farm game was the start of their gaming empire, they are also responsible for games like Frontierville, Mafia Wars, Petville and many others.
Zynga has been a pioneer in the world of Facebook gaming, and now they are going public. It's been in the works for some time now, but in a move that is no surprise to those in the Finance world, Zynga has announced that their IPO is scheduled for December 15, 2011. The IPO is certainly one of the most anticipated ones of the year.
The social gaming company, who has received a great deal of gaming and tech awards, is being valued around $10 billion dollars. Although that is a staggering amount of money, it's a whole lot less than $20 billion that was estimated earlier in the year.
According to experts, the company will be pricing shares in the $8-$10 range.
Although there hasn't been any official statement as of yet, Zynga is expected to sell around 10% of their shared to the public.
It's worth noting that Reuters reported that Mark Pincus, Zynga's founder and CEO and Kleiner Perkins, one of the primary venture capital investors, will not be selling their shares.
Zynga's success is extraordinary. Their games have 54 million daily players, 227 million monthly users and has players in 175 countries.
It's impressive, but I have to wonder what will happen to the games once the company is accountable to shareholders. As it is right now, if a daily player stops playing for a week or so, their email box will be filled with messages from Zynga offering incentives to come back. Although they are a rapidly growing company, I can't help wondering what will happen when players get tired of the games and look for other social networking games. Hopefully they will have something else to offer.
What do you think about Zynga's IPO? Do you think it's a good investment? Let me know in the comments.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for FinancialJobBank and Nexxt. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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