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Zynga, a company that makes popular games including Texas Hold ‘Em and Blackjack for Facebook, has raised $10 million in venture capital according to The New York Times. In total, the company’s games represent more than 10 million installs on Facebook, with more than 700,000 daily active users according to Fred Wilson, whose firm Union Square Ventures lead the financing round.

While the company is currently focusing on Facebook with its Hold ‘Em game currently showing more than 400,000 active users, the company’s long-term strategy is to build games that work across multiple social networks. With the recent announcement that Bebo will be allowing developers to port their Facebook applications over, as well as the current buzz around DataPortability, this strategy could be a lot easier to pursue than it looked a few months ago, when each social network was busy building their own independent platform.

Zynga is founded by Mark Pincus, best-known for founding one of the early social networks – Tribe.net – which was acquired by Cisco (yes, that Cisco) last year.

With its big round of funding, it’s becoming clear that games are one of the more successful genres of Facebook applications. Just two weeks ago, Buddy Media acquired five popular Facebook applications from ChipIn including “Pirates versus Ninjas” for a reported sum in the low-seven figures. Between the natural social aspect of games and the industry shift towards interoperability, Zynga appears to be in the right place at the right time.

source: Zynga Raises $10 Million for Gaming on Social Networks

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Roman

Has anyone been doing anything with Facebook? Applications? Blackhat???

I've been considering getting some apps built to promote some of my sites, but I haven't put the effort into think of something creative that would spread.