By now most have probably heard that Alec Baldwin was kicked off an American Airlines flight last week for playing the Zynga game Words With Friends on his phone. Zynga wasn't about to let this golden opportunity pass and created the following image exclusively for TMZ (a popular American tabloid show). Some passengers on the plane said that Alec Balwin was actually talking on the phone and not playing a game. A crew member told the NY Post that he was removed because he became "violent, aggressive" toward the staff (1).
(image from TMZ)
This incident generated a lot of publicity for Zynga and couldn't happen at a better time. Zynga shares will begin trading on Friday and financial analysts are already recommending that investors sell. Analyst Arvind Bhatia gave Zynga a underperform rating. Below is a video that contains more details. He clearly has the original Mafia Wars confused with Mafia Wars 2 (1).
On the iTunes Words With Friend Page Zynga boasts that there are over 20 million players addicted to their game. Zynga loves to inflate their metrics anyway they can. Mafia Wars has become a spam fest because of it. If people believe that there are over 20 million Words With Friends players then they probably believe there are over 25 million Mafia Wars players as the Facebook Application Data description states. These will be the people buying up stocks that many predict will go down in value fairly quickly. It was another record setting day in Mafia Wars and the Monthly Active Users fell below the 3 million mark. As long as Alec Baldwin is pimping Words With Friends, Zynga probably doesn't care what happens to Mafia Wars.
Thanks to Jager Best and John Troeger for posting update links on the Zynga IPO standing and Mike Nestor for the video embed codes.
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| Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. |
I love when analysts tell Pinkus that keeping the players does matter
ReplyDeleteAs bad as you think things are with Mafia Wars now wait until after they go public. I fully expect extra spam events and many other ways for them to try and squeeze money out of you.
ReplyDeleteAs an investor, I'd also be concerned about shorting a company like this. Don't underestimate the number of uninformed investors out there thinking that this is the next Google or Apple. I certainly wouldn't want to be caught up in a short squeeze on this one.