Posts Tagged ‘Farmville’
DEMO: Matt Marshall looks at tech trends coming ‘down your tailpipe’
DEMO Executive Producer and VentureBeat Editor in Chief Matt Marshall got the technology launchpad conference started this morning with a speech looking at some of the big trends behind .
Matt began his speech by recounting a date he had last week. Apparently, his girlfriend whipped out her phone, showed him her farm on a game that Matt recognized as “possibly being FarmVille.” (It wasn’t FarmVille. Matt is plugged into the startup scene, but he doesn’t exactly spend a lot of time gaming.) After the date, he went home, set up a FarmVille farm, and was soon sending pigs to an editor of a competing tech blog, who promptly returned the favor by mocking him on Facebook.
What was his point? Is social gaming going to be a big focus at DEMO Fall 2010? Not exactly. Matt said the incident drove home how a startup like FarmVille-maker Zynga can insinuate itself into our daily lives: “This industry has sprouted up from nothing,” he said.
So Matt identified three more industries that are going to come up a lot at the conference — the new wave of e-commerce, powered to a large extent by social media; mobile advertising and technology; and cloud computing. These industries aren’t exactly starting from nothing right now, but they are growing “just as quickly,” and at DEMO we’ll be highlighting companies that represent the next evolution in those technologies.
“These trends have created the perfect fire hazard conditions for industries to be ignited,” Matt said, later adding, “This stuff is coming down your tailpipe, whatever industry you’re in.”
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Zynga’s social gaming phenomenon, FarmVille, coming to iPhones
is the biggest success story to come out of the new wave of social game companies, bu it has been curiously absent from one of the hottest new game platforms — the iPhone. That’s changing today with chief executive ‘ announcement that Zynga is releasing FarmVille for iPhone.
FarmVille is Zynga’s biggest hit, with Pincus reporting that it has more than 70 million monthly active users. The main platform until now has been Facebook, but Pincus said, “With FarmVille on the iPhone, you can farm anytime, anywhere.”
The San Francisco company has released iPhone games before, but none appeared to take off the way Zynga’s products did on Facebook. So this marks Zynga’s return to the platform, and in a big way with its flagship game. It comes as the company is , and as it eyes an initial public offering. If the new game takes off, it should make Zynga less dependent on Facebook.
One question is whether virtual goods purchases on FarmVille for iPhone will be as lucrative as they have been on Facebook. Pincus said players will be able to buy items that are unique to the iPhone, such as a snow leopard. The game will also take advantage of the iPhone’s push notification feature, so players get alerts when their crops are dying.
Zynga plans to release FarmVille on the iPhone later this month.
[image via ]
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