Zynga Live Poker and Facebook, a winning combination

The rise of Facebook to first place in social network ranking will probably be studied in the future in university communication courses. One of the secrets of this success must be due to the unique applications and services offered, among them social games. Zynga’s Live Poker, launched on Facebook in early 2008, is certainly one of the site’s strengths.

Once upon a time, there was Facebook
In English the term Facebook means "school yearbook." When Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched the site named Facebook in 2004, the intention was to provide a social network limited to students of this university. The success was so impressive, that in a short time the service was offered to other universities and high schools.

The number of registered users has grown exponentially. In his last post, published on September 15, 2009 on Facebook Blog, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the number of the site users has surpassed the incredible figure of 300 million people.

Secrets of Facebook’s success
The site’s user interface, as well as the services and applications offered are at the very basis of this social network’s success. Facebook ousted all the previous sites of this kind. A decisive breakthrough occurred with the introduction of social games. Live Poker, Farmville, Mafia Wars, Pet Society, and others have been at leading positions on the “top 25 Facebook games" ranking for months.

Zynga’s Live Poker, launched on Facebook in early 2008, is certainly one of the site’s strengths.

Facebook and Live Poker
Facebook started to offer online Texas Hold'em at the beginning of 2008, and unlike games of chance offered by other social networks, it is completely legal. Every day the player’s chip stock is automatically renewed, without the need to make any payment. If a player has finished his stock before the following day, he can purchase millions of additional chips by just paying a few dollars. In any case, he will never be allowed to withdraw cash prizes.

Among friends, it is possible to switch chips, so if a player loses them all before he can receive the next day’s stock, his Facebook friends can pass him as many chips as they want.

Poker chip trading
Theoretically, the only authorized chips detailer is Zynga, the company producing the gaming software used by Facebook. Using their gaming platform you can easily purchase new chips. Outside of Facebook, however, things are quite different and there are many who try to make money by trading LivePoker chips.

The most common phenomenon is that of users who create robots that can play forever without stopping and accumulate incredible amounts of chips. Later on, these chips are offered for sale. It is enough, for example, to enter into Google the keywords “purchase-facebook-poker-chip” to realize how huge the supply on the Net is.

Despite Zynga‘s warnings on its website that the purchase and sale of chips for every game offered on Facebook or MySpace is illegal, and that the user account who trades is reset to zero, the trade flourishes.

Avatars and cultural trends
With the evolution of Live Poker, Zynga and Facebook have added other services for sale, besides the possibility to buy additional chips. One of the most popular services is to buy special avatars, not included in the basic avatar collection offered by Zynga.

Here it is possible to see the cultural differences between Facebook users, who come from over 150 different countries and have extremely varied preferences. European consumers show little interest in the option to purchase special avatars, while it seems that this feature enjoys a huge success among users from Asian countries. In addition to buying an avatar, it is possible to buy them clothing and accessories, items for their houses and more.

How much is Facebook worth? 
With over 300 million users and hundreds of millions of players willing to put a few dollars to buy chips or any other feature that enhances the game, Facebook is a real goose that laid the golden egg. The number of companies interested in advertising on the site is constantly growing.

According to the latest assessment published by Bloomberg, Facebook’s actual worth is 9.5 billion dollars.