Why Zynga, NOT Scrabulous, Has a Lucky Facebook Charm
The Scrabulous Facebook games are heating up.
Last week, I broke the news that Zynga is at Facebook risk too. SEE my January 16, 2008 story: Scrabulous At Risk? Zynga $10 million VC Game: Facebook Roulette
Is Fred Wilson being too casual with Union Square Ventures’ money I asked? After all, the USV backed Zynga’s all-in bet on Facebook could blow up in smoke! Just ask Scrabulous, I underscored.
Now, six days later, Erick Schonfeld, Michael TechCrunch Arrington’s lieutenant, also wonders “Is Zynga next”? Wonder how he started to wonder that???
While now jumping on the Zynga at risk boat, though, Schonfeld misses the Zynga boat. TechCrunch rattles off some of the high-powered Zynga investors, but neglects to make the crucial connection as I did last Wednesday: Crossover shareholder dreams!
Zynga believes it is NOT Scrabulous, claiming to have immunized itself from game infringement claims by scrambling its game names. What’s more, though, the high-powered Zynga investors are also Facebook investors: founder Mark Pincus himself, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman…
AND, didn’t we learn from the Associated Press yesterday that anything Angel Reid Hoffman touches turns to gold!!! Zynga and $10 million VC team undoubtedly believe they have powerful, incestuous secret Facebook weapons at their disposal, their own lucky Facebook charms.
As Mark Zuckerberg reminded Lesley Stahl, he has plenty of competent lawyers at his $15 billion disposal.
Schonfeld really gets it wrong though when he gives startup “advice” to would be future F8 game developers, hailing that “social networks have been a boon for casual gaming online,” so game on, with a license.
SORRY, Erick, a licensed game only mitigates one of the two double-whammy Facebook risks that a “cool app” such as Scrabulous engenders, as I underscored last Wednesday.
Web 2.0 VC standard bearers are throwing $10 million Zynga Facebook caution to the wind and heeding the “Internet court jester”’s advice to “Throw out your development, go use Facebook.” WHY, though? Because “It doesn’t matter if you are “better,” what matters is that you are “standard,” Esther Dyson gushed about Zuckerberg’s F8 upon its unveiling to the world.
BUT, is piggybacking on someone else’s property REALLY a bankable business model, I asked last week. WELL, who even needs a solid business model after all, at the time of a Web 2.0 investment, as we are repeatedly reminded by blogger VCs.
The Scrabulous team is piggybacking on the businesses of TWO other businesses: Scrabble and Facebook. ANY and ALL F8 third-party games play at the fickle mercy of Mark Zuckerberg, a young man fond of having his high-priced legal tgam whip up some high-powered terms of service:
We do our absolute best to keep Facebook Platform up and bug-free, but you use it at your own risk.
You must get signoff from us before releasing any formal press releases.
We reserve the right to charge a fee for using Facebook Platform and/or any individual features thereof at any time in our sole discretion.
Facebook may be independently creating Applications, content and other products or services that may be similar to your Facebook Platform Applications.
SEE: AP On LinkedIn: Social Networking Gold Mine at $5 per User?
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