Yahoo! today announced a partnership with Zynga that will integrate Zynga’s social games across the Yahoo! network. The partnership puts Zynga games in front of 600 million Yahoo! users and creates new ‘ports’ of Zynga’s games that use the Yahoo API so players can see their updates across Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger. The games will be released in the coming months and there aren’t any details about which games will specifically be released. Read on for more information from the release.
This marks yet another partnership by Zynga, after recently agreeing to use Facebook credits in a 5 year agreement with Facebook. This time, it looks like Zynga has made a deal that will massively grow it’s already enormous, 230 million person audience. The games will be released in the “coming months”, and while there aren’t any details about which games will be released or whether the games will leverage technologies like Facebook Connect. The official press release had this to say:
Zynga’s game integration with Yahoo! is part of Yahoo!’s commitment to offer personally relevant experiences to people from across the Web. Zynga games are expected to roll out on the Yahoo! network in the coming months and will include:
- Ability for people to play Zynga games and access their personal Zynga game updates across Yahoo!’s properties including the Homepage, Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and others.
- Sharing of updates across multiple social experiences simultaneously while playing their favorite Zynga games on Yahoo!
We’ll be watching this development to see whether the games on Yahoo! will be similar to the way Farmville was released on MSN. Attached below are quotes from Yahoo! and Zynga regarding the partnership.
“Yahoo is focused on providing compelling, personally relevant experiences and social games are core to this experience,” said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president, Yahoo! Americas. “Zynga will bring top notch social game experiences to Yahoo!, including through our open platforms such as Yahoo! Application Platform and Yahoo! Updates. Yahoo! will also continue to work with other partners, developers and publishers to bring compelling innovations and experiences from across the web to our users.”
“With over 35 million unique users playing our games every single day, social games are fast becoming a leading source of entertainment worldwide surpassing most television shows,” said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga. “Our partnership with Yahoo! gives millions of new users the ability to connect with friends and families through games.”
