Move over, Apple, Google, Facebook and company. Silicon Valley’s hottest start-up could soon join the tech pantheon.
Few tech companies are hotter — or provoke more comments — than Zynga.
The social-gaming behemoth that brought FarmVille and FrontierVille to tens of millions of people is valued at a gaudy $5.5 billion, besting industry icon Electronic Arts. In the next few weeks, it will roll out what it expects to be its next blockbuster game, CityVille. Yahoo just made Zynga titles available on its site, and Google is expected to follow. Zynga is readying a move next year to palatial new digs here, after hiring 863 people this year.
No lesser authorities than Internet icon Marc Andreessen and venture-capital superstar John Doerr see Zynga as the next big thing in tech. Hollywood royalty such as Jeffrey Katzenberg and J.J. Abrams are lining up to work with Zynga. And investors are salivating for an initial public stock offering.
“This is a cocktail party,” Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says. “Facebook is throwing the greatest cocktail party on Earth. We are creating mini-cocktail parties, at farms, cities, wherever. It affords a new way to be involved in an engaging way.”
Zynga Nation, the virtual world Pincus invented in 2007 as a place where PC users could gather on social networks and play casual games at their leisure, boasts more than 225 million active members a month. Zynga got its name from Pincus’ beloved American bulldog, Zinga (enzinga is Swahili for “warrior princess”), who died in late 2008.
In all, 320 million people have played Zynga games at some point.
Six of the top 10 games on Facebook, where 200 million or more of its members play games each month, are from Zynga. And the cash is flowing in, as evidenced by Zynga’s sizable slice of the $1.7 billion domestic market for…