Nice find.
I was aware of Google buying into Zynga. I hadn’t thought of the Zynga poker angle – that opens up not just a google issue, but a facebook games issue.
Facebook games are already giving our industry a run for the money. Favebook games pull in huge amunts of money. But they do it in small increments, and from millions of users. Farmville for instance has over 6 million users alone. All games from just Zynga together have some 250 million users.
I think social games have more of an impact on this industry than the economy and UIGEA combined.
Now Zynga poker is by far not the only gambling related social game, there are dozens. At this time, they don’t depend on any single user buying virtual items, but they get to spread it among millions of users.
They don’t buy adspace at all except within facebook. I am not sure if facebook forces them to stay local, or if it’s just not worth the trouble for them.
If they were to offer real gambling when UIGEA gets overturned – oh wow!