Zynga Wins with Business Intelligence
The Internet and social media websites have provided lucrative business opportunities for many companies. However, one particular success story is Zynga, a gaming company founded by Mark Pincus and a group of entrepreneurs. Zynga is currently the leading developer of social network games, such as CityVille, Texas HoldEm Poker and Farmville. Zynga uses Facebook as its main network and relies on the social media aspect of the website to attract potential gamers to play their games. Clearly this method works, as the three games listed above are the most frequently used applications on Facebook. Statistically, Zynga’s games have 250 million monthly active users, of which generate 3 terabytes of data per day. However, what is unique about Zynga is not their large playerbase, but the way in which they use the ladder of inference format to process the huge amount of data into information and knowledge.
Zynga rely heavily on their ‘Business Intelligence’ which can be defined as an Organization’s ability to take all its capabilities and convert them into knowledge. This again can be referenced back to the ladder of inference and a company like Zynga’s ability to convert raw data into knowledge, which can then be used to improve their product. Zynga starts with a game, but then studies data to determine how its players play, what ypes of players are most active and what virtual goods the players buy. It then uses the data to get players to play longer, tell more friends and even buy more goods. Zynga identify data as one of the essential factors in creating business improvements via their reporting and analytics teams. They have identified 3 main metrics that drive the economics of social gaming, which are;
• Churn Rate – The loss rate of game players
• Viral Coefficient – The measure of the effectiveness of existing player in bringing in new players
• Expected Revenue Per User – An estimate of expected revenue, based on monthly revenue per user and the churn rate.
Zynga rely heavily on their ‘Business Intelligence’ which can be defined as an Organization’s ability to take all its capabilities and convert them into knowledge. This again can be referenced back to the ladder of inference and a company like Zynga’s ability to convert raw data into knowledge, which can then be used to improve their product. Zynga starts with a game, but then studies data to determine how its players play, what ypes of players are most active and what virtual goods the players buy. It then uses the data to get players to play longer, tell more friends and even buy more goods. Zynga identify data as one of the essential factors in creating business improvements via their reporting and analytics teams. They have identified 3 main metrics that drive the economics of social gaming, which are;
• Churn Rate – The loss rate of game players
• Viral Coefficient – The measure of the effectiveness of existing player in bringing in new players
• Expected Revenue Per User – An estimate of expected revenue, based on monthly revenue per user and the churn rate.