"That could make San Francisco-based Zynga the third-largest U.S. video-game publisher by market capitalization, bigger than Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., the maker of crime-game franchise Grand Theft Auto."<p>Awful. A company that uses sleazy monetization tactics (until someone called them out on it) and blatantly ripoffs games from competitors will be worth more than one of the most innovative game developers.<p>Mobwars > GTA?<p>I guess the valuation though reflects the business fundamentals of social vs console gaming.
I hope someone standardizes things that go on inside social networks. Should we consider the money made from selling deceptive ads as a legal? Or is it even a proper revenue model? (For eg. certain ads say user will get points if he takes a 2 min IQ test, and in the end the user signs up for the service unintentionally, and ends up paying a monthly bill before he notices the charge and cancels it.)<p>And I may be wrong, but what intellectual capital does a company like this have? Anyone who buys it, is just buying the user base. And what about the future of the company? What would be the revenue 5 years later? How does a quantitative analyst factor this while calculating the worth of the company?