Jesus Christ people, why on earth would you delete my discussion about Zynga's paying $160 million for a tiny game developer with a single program that is doing well at all?

It's an interesting topic.

I saw that and it didn't look spammy. Someone had an itchy trigger finger.

Too enthusiastic deleting would have to be the main reason why I take breaks from CoT.  It's just so annoying to start a thread with no issues and find it's been deleted.

Second reason to take a break is the general bitchiness here.  Probably a majority of threads result in someone accusing or insulting another person.

If it were a group of women I'd suggest we've all synced up and it's that time of the month - permanently.

>>If it were a group of women I'd suggest we've all synced up and it's that time of the month - permanently.

syncing likely a myth: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2429/does-menstrual-synchrony-really-exist

I prefer overenthusiastic moderation to overly lax one. With Dr H out of control, CoT reeked with sh...t.

AA

Could you repost the link?

The bitchiness will decrease now that muppet is gone.

It was mostly an analysis of the purchase, I posted last night, don't remember all the details. I found the first sentence indexed on google but I guess it didn't cache the actual message.

> subject: Zynga's $180 million purchase of Omgpop

> Omgpop has one mobile game that suddenly become popular a few weeks ago and was selling $100000 a day.

Anyway, this is some small company with no hits and no income. They have a mobile unlicensed version of Pictionary that you play in turns with any other friend running the same program. Program gives you a word, you try to draw it, friend tries to guess what it is. When they get it right then they get to do one for you, back and forth forever. Took a couple days to program the thing, very simple. It was the company's first game that made any income and suddenly was making $100,000 a day. Now they only released this thing a few weeks ago. Zynga, the company that rips off its employees and makes Farmville, paid $180 million to purchase this company, basically to purchase the game called "Draw Something" (I think that's the name) and the 3 or 4 people working there. Most of the money went to the VCs that were backing the place and the founder, who had quit and left last year and had absolutely nothing to do with the new game, he was only responsible for the flops.

I noted that a lot of #1 app store games make a lot suddenly, and then a few weeks later are down to nothing after everybody has it. Also, apparently the game is free but you pay for upgrades or something so the $100,000 a day is only a small number of the new users.

Anyway I then ask if $180 million is a reasonable price for Zynga to pay for a small company that has only made one small game that made any income, a game that was a clone of a game some other company made, and which was trivial to code.

Googling "Zynga Omgpop" brings up various article about it. I haven't read them, I just saw the headlines "Zynga buys Omgpop for $180 million". I knew what Zynga was and a couple days ago someone showed me the Draw Something program so I knew who they were and had read an article on the $100,000 a day flash in the pan thing.

It's crazy for anyone to pay $180 million for that and yet it's not surprising that Zynga would do it -- they have more (VC) cash than sense.

Mea culpa. Abject apologies.

S'okay man, thanks.

Angry, I didn't see your post, but if it looked like spam, you did it wrong.  Tell us what you liked about the link. Give some insight of how it affects you.

Don't just post a link and say, "This is great!"  Did you do that? If so, I'd have hit the delete buton.

Actually there was no link, it was a post, similar length to above.

I suppose you all have had a chance to ponder this situation.

Here's my take.

$180 million? Are they smoking crack?

The company has a very low hit to loss ratio. The current sole hit is not all that special, and is likely to be subjected to a lawsuit since it's an obvious rip off of a game made by a big company.

What are they buying for their money? Who made this decision?

I do actually understand it. They have no idea how to hire talent, so they wait for someone to have a #1 hit in the App Store, then they make a big offer. The details of the company and circumstance don't matter to them.

BTW, as evidence this is their only strategy, the previous #1 app at the app store, "Words With Friends" hit #1 and the next week Zynga entered into negotiations to buy their creator "NewToy", a two man (brothers) owned shop out, paying $53 million for the acquisition.

Hmm, there might be a business model hiding in there :)

1. Reach #1 at App Store
2. Accept 8-9 figures from Zynga
3. Profit!

I probably hit the delete button too. I think the subject line and text just looked like spam.

Why don't you repost the Zynga thread, and keep this one meta.

I have protested about the censoring mafia here.

As far as I am concerned, only spam should be deleted. Everything else, including Doc's random musings should stay.

But that's just me.

Great!

Holocaust(tm) never happened, y'all.

If that helps you sleep easier doc, then sweet.

Most of the guys who say "Holocaust didn't happen" actually know full well it did, and would like to gang up and finish the job some day.

That's how they know it didn't happen -- if it had happened, the job wouldn't have to be done over.

Yeah, they're not deluded, they're just perfectionists.